Activity: Annotated Bibliography

Overview

An annotated bibliography is an expanded list of cited research sources (e.g, journal articles, books, reports, etc.). Each source in the bibliography includes an annotation that:

• Summarizes the content of a source
• Critically assesses the content of a source — strengths and weaknesses, arguments, evidence, methodology, biases, etc.
• Reflects on the relevance of the source to your research — What does this source add to your understanding? Why did you include the source in your bibliography? How does it relate to other works in your bibliography?

Annotated bibliographies are oftentimes required as part of an initial research proposal. They can also serve as a first step in a more formal literature review. Reading annotated bibliographies written by others (sometimes formally published as articles and books) can be useful in evaluating what resources will likely be most useful for your research topic.

Sample Annotated Bibliographies

Annotations can vary from discipline to discipline. These are samples of published book and article length annotated bibliographies from various fields.

• Attitudes Toward Stuttering: An Annotated Bibliography (chapter in Stuttering Meets Stereotype, Stigma, and Discrimination: An Overview of Attitude Research)
• Critical Race Theory: An Annotated Bibliography (article)
• Disability History: Suggested Readings–An Annotated Bibliography (article)
• Environmental Effects of Postfire Logging: An Updated Literature Review and Annotated Bibliography (U.S. Forest Service booklet)
• Italian Literature since 1900 in English Translation: An Annotated Bibliography (book)

Activity: Write an Annotated Bibliography Entry

1. Select an article or book you’ve recently read (ideally related to your research interest). If you don’t have a handy source on hand, do a quick keyword search Academic Search Complete (a multi-disciplinary database of scholarly and popular articles) for an article on a topic of interest.
2. Create a properly formatted citation for the article/book in the syle most common for your discipline (MLA, APA, etc.). To format your citation:
   • • Use the “Cite” feature available in Academic Search Complete and in many other library databases.
     • Use a citation generator such as ZoteroBib.
     • Use a citation manager like EndNote Basic, Mendeley, or Zotero.
     • Manually format your citation following models provided by Purdue’s Online Writing Lab (OWL).
3. In paragraph form, summarize, assess, and reflect on the content of the source. See the sources below for more advice on writing annotations.

More on Annotated Bibliographies:

• Integrated Social Sciences Program: Annotated Bibliographies
• Purdue Online Writing Lab (OWL): Annotated Bibliographies.  Also see OWL’s video, What is an Annotated Bibliography? (5.08 minutes)
• Twenty-One Genres and How to Write Them: Annotated Bibliography (see pages 11-18)
• University of Toronto: Writing an Annotated Bibliography