Annotated Bibliography

Annotated Bibliography

To annotate something means to write notes on or about it. A bibliography is a collection of the sources you will be using in a paper.

An annotated bibliography, then, is a list of your sources with notes on how they fit into your research.

An annotated bibliography is a way for you to bring all your research together and map out how it relates. By creating the annotated bibliography, you will be able to return to your research later without being completely lost as to the significance the sources once held for you.

The annotated bibliography is formatted almost exactly like a works cited page, with one addition. Under each source citation, you will give a short summary and analysis of the entry so that you can return to it with ease. This will also allow you to see how your research relates.

For this Long Essay, you will need to have at least 2 credible library sources (books or articles). You will most likely read through more sources while researching, but you must end up using at least two for your paper. You can use more if you like, and that might be a good idea, since you will need to find more research when doing LE3. But, at the very least, you must find two sources for LE2.

Process:

For each source on the annotated bibliography, you will first cite the source as you would on the work cited page according to MLA citation style.

Then, underneath the source, you will do a couple things. First, briefly summarize the source (what is it about, what is the purpose, what is the main argument of the source? Be specific!). This should be about 3-4 sentences. Then, in about 2-4 sentences, analyze the source (how is it appropriate for your research? Why? Is the source reliable? How do you know? What did you learn from this source?).

You will do one of these entries for each source you use for you paper, but you will still use a traditional works cited page for the actual essay you turn into me.

Keep in mind that this is for you, not me. Spend time on these entries because it will help you later on when compiling your essay. The following is a sample of what an entry might look like. It is a sample from my own research; even though I am further along the path of research, more experienced researchers still use this technique to organize and make sense of their research.



Bettelheim, Bruno. The Uses of Enchantment: The Meaning and
Importance of Fairy Tales. New York: Vintage Books, 1989. Print.

This work is a highly contested work of interpretation of fairy tales for children, and thus needs to be used cautiously. Will not be focusing on psychoanalytic approach in this work, but Bettelheim does provide a great point in his introduction. He acknowledges that many adults complain about the lack of moral guidance in tales such as Jacobs’s version of “Jack and the Beanstalk.” His response is that tales such as these (and “Puss in Boots” and other such trickster tales of a small character overcoming an ogre) do not serve the purpose of traditional moral education (there are plenty of tales for that). Rather, these trickster tales provide psychic hope for a child who in general feels small and powerless and allows the child to feel it is possible to overcome oppressive forces in life. This ties into the progressive ideological bent of Jacobs’s version, which not only has faith in children being able to not accept theft in general as good (as Jacobs’s says elsewhere), but also promotes ideas that the weak can overcome the strong.