Then examine every item in your preliminary list and choose the works that provide the necessary information.

To create an annotated bibliography, you first need to do a careful library search: find articles, books, and other sources that may contain useful information and ideas on your topic. Whether you need to simply describe or critically evaluate or analyze each source depends on your assignment and/or the purpose of your bibliography.Īnnotation summary or evaluation paragraphs should usually be arranged alphabetically, according to the author’s last name, and need to be in line with the required citation style (more on that below). Annotation ComponentsĮach entry in an annotated bibliography consists of a citation and the “ annotation“, a short paragraph that summarizes or evaluates the source. Creating an annotated bibliography is also a great way for you to familiarize yourself with and review the material available on a particular topic, and to take systematic notes that help you organize your thoughts and identify gaps in the existing literature or issues that might be worth exploring further. The purpose of such annotation lists is not only to show your professor that you have done your job (although it can sometimes feel like that)-it is to describe and categorize the literature on the topic you are researching, and to critically analyze how relevant or meaningful each source is for your current work, how accurate the findings are, and whether the conclusions drawn by the authors are justified. It usually consists of citations followed by short paragraphs of 150–250 words. An annotated bibliography is a list of sources (books, articles, other publications) that provides an overview of the available research on a topic by summarizing, interpreting, or evaluating each entry.

Key to writing annotations for gaa