What is an annotated bibliography?
When more than “the facts, ma’am, just the facts” is needed, say hello to the annotated bibliography.
An annotated bibliography starts with the standard citation stuff – author’s name, title of the work, publication – but then you get to shine with a brief description of the source material, why it’s pertinent to your work and best of, all what you think of it. You can and should dump on the source if you didn’t find it very useful or discovered, horror of horrors, inaccuracies. An annotated bibliography, though harder to compile – yes, you have to think a little bit more – is a slam dunk way to show you read the sucker.
Alert: Remember your audience. If your teacher or professor is the formal type, you might want to can the cutesy comments.
So, how do you put together an annotated bibliography?
First, gather that basic citation info, title, author, and so on – carmun will format it in the bibliography style you choose.
Next, you need a summary of the source. Something along the lines of “So and Sos present their findings on the effects on cognitive reasoning of watching a YouTube Drama Prairie Dog video 2,473 times.” Give the authors’ conclusion. Did Drama Prairie Dog viewing help, hurt or make no difference to the thinking process. You might want to throw in something about the authors’ background and credibility.
A word of caution here. This is a bibliography, not your paper. Do yourself a favor and follow the principle of KISS. That’s not the heavily made up, heavy rock band, but Keep It Simple, Stupid. Try to keep the citation to between 75 and 100 words. It can run longer, but not much.
Move on to the assessment of the source. Was it well organized? Well written? Totally bogus? How useful was it for your paper’s topic? In the case of the prairie dog video paper, you might question the conclusions’ worth since there were only seven people in the study and they were all age 93.
Share it on carmun. Once you’ve written an annotated bibliography, why not post it on carmun? If something was good and helpful, say so. If an article was turgid, moronic and worthless, rant and spew. Consider this a humanitarian effort. You’re saving others in the carmun universe from suffering, as well.
One final point. The layout of annotated bibliographies is much the same from style to style – except for that rascally CSE. The difference basically lies in how the top citation info – author, title, pub data – is presented. No sweat. That’s the same formatting as a regular bibliography entry. Carmun does that for you.
