Annotated bibliography

GOAL: bombard yourself with information regarding your topic. You will use the grounds on your position paper outline to do your searching. Ideally, you are trying to find sources that can be used to support your grounds. But do not lose sight of the purpose of the experience – getting informed.

I have attached a copy of my formal proposal which includes my grounds as well as a copy of a sample annotated bibliography

FOUR PARTS OF AN ENTRY

Citation:MLA format (8^thedition); BOLD

Summary: 5 – 10 college length sentences; no first person pronouns

• This means you must find lengthier, comprehensive sources in order to summarizein 5 – 10 sentences. (No short readings for this assignment.) But it is also unreasonable to expect that you will read entire books, so do not use books unless you are actually reading them in full. Look for longer articles and chapters within books.

Evaluation: 5 – 10 college length sentences; is this source academically reliable?

• Credentials of author….organization/school?
• Bias? Tone?
• Date? (is date relevant?)
• Kinds of sources cited within the text…are they referenced? Etc…
• Peer reviewed? Journal? Publisher?

Statement of use: 1 – 2 sentences; is this source potentially useful to my paper?

Annotated bibliography checklist

entries should be in alphabetical order, according to the first letter of the citation

no bullets, numbers, or anything funky preceding the citation

write in complete sentences

avoid repetition of full citation information in the annotations

avoid second person pronouns

avoid opinion on your part in the summary section (no position commentary anywhere)

use a variety of academic sources (DO NOT USE: wikipedia, google, abstracts, blogs, dictionaries and encyclopedias…etc.) – stick to books, newspaper articles, and academic texts from the University databases accessed through WorldCat (on the library home page)