An annotated bibliography is a research tool that will help you to keep track of the sources you encounter while working on larger research projects. Generally, an annotated bibliography reflects an exhaustive search of a topic; for this class, we will treat this assignment as an introduction to the tool rather than to expect a complete bibliography.
This tool is related directly to a References page, except here, we follow each of your five citations with a brief (100 words or less) explanation of:
1. Who the author is and their relevance to the subject we are exploring.
2. Who the intended audience is.
3. How this citation relates or contrasts to at least one of our other sources.
4. How this source helps to further our discussion of the topic.
Through this assignment, we ask that you read the criteria for the Researched Argument essay, choose a topic, and begin researching that topic (note that you should have already chosen a topic through last week's assignment and discussion forum).
To receive full credit for this assignment, you must have five or more annotations in your bibliography.
This is essentially summarizing each source, so try to treat it as a tool to help you and others find their way through this topic.
An annotated bibliography should be on its own page and take the attached form
Checklist for Annotated Bibliography:
1. Does this bibliography meet the assignment criteria?
2. How does the formatting of this assignment look? Does it follow basic APA guidelines for a Reference page? (i.e. Times New Roman font, double-spaced, no extra spacing between paragraphs, first line of the citation flush left with all following lines indented, etc.?).
3. Are the annotations brief, clear, and informative? Do they avoid personal opinion? Do they act as a reference guide?
4. Imagine you are writing an essay about the same subject (you will be). If you came upon this in your research, how useful would you find this bibliography to be?
5. Do this bibliography contain at least five citations?
