Annotated Bibliographies, Examples

Annotated Bibliographies
It is not uncommon for instructors to ask students to provide an annotated bibliography
(either as an assignment on its own or as part of a proposal for a research paper). An
annotated bibliography is an alphabetical list of citations of books, articles, films,
catalogue essays and other documents, followed by a brief paragraph that describes,
summarizes and evaluates the source. This explanatory "paragraph" is called the
annotation.
A good research paper illustrates your ability to express your opinions and insights in
relation to the scholarly work of other academics and artists working in a particular field.
In the process of doing your research, you will probably notice that scholars often take a
position in relation to that which has been said by other writers. Not only are they
acknowledging their work and giving credit where credit is due, they are acknowledging
the fact that research is, by its very nature, a collaborative project. When you provide an
annotated bibliography for your instructor, you are illustrating that you, too, are
participating in an ongoing and ever changing discussion and debate, that you are able to
conduct appropriate research, and to examine various types of resources. Most instructors
will not want you to limit your research to the internet alone. They will want you to read
books, academic articles, catalogue essays, watch films and videos, etc. and an annotated
bibliography allows them to see that you will be using diverse and relevant sources.
For a further discussion of this, please see the handouts on "Framing," "Writing Critical
Summaries," and "A Brief Guide to Documenting Your Sources" and the links to
handouts below. The critical studies faculty at Ecuad have agreed to accept MLA style
documentation, so please use that format.
As you will see from the examples below, annotated bibliographies vary in length from
one or two sentences to a paragraph or two (they are rarely longer than 200 words). Make
sure to ask your instructor what they deem to be an appropriate length. You should also
find out whether they simply want a synopsis of the article or book or whether they want
you to evaluate and explain how what you've been reading is going to be reflected in your
research paper.

Here's an example, taken from Rory Wallace's Visual Culture class that outlines the
specific requirements of an annotated bibliography assignment:
List at least four sources as you would a "Works Cited" list at the end of your Final
Assignment. You must include at least one book, one journal article, and one web source.
Give the appropriate citation according to the MLA format, and then write four of five
sentences which describe the content of the source, how it may be useful to you, and
whether you think this a valuable source. Is it a reliable, superficial, or demanding source,
for example, and why?
In some upper level courses your instructor may assume that you already know what an
annotated bibliography is. If that is not the case, then make a concerted effort to ask what
exactly it is they want.
If you'd like to see some representative examples of annotated bibliographies written for
Susan Stewart's Art History 420 class, please click here.
University of Wisconsin-Madison Writing Centre has compiled an eight page handout on
annotated bibliographies. They cover purpose, format, and content and point out the
differences between the informative, indicative, and evaluative annotation and provide an
example of a combination of all three.
Cornell University provides an outline on how to write annotated bibliographies. Their
web page, How to Critically Analyze Information Sources should also prove to be very
useful.
The Annotated Bibliography and Guide to Archival Resources on the History
of Jewish Women in Americagraphy provides a number of examples that range from two
to three sentences in length to two paragraphs.