Annotated Bibliography
An annotated bibliography is an alphabetically arranged list of sources accompanied by a brief explanatory note about the contents and/or value of each item. Annotations can vary in length from a single sentence or fragment to a paragraph or more, but you are not expected to provide more than a short (1-2 sentence) statement. A good note provides the book’s thesis and the source’s contents; it can be explanatory and/or critical and should provide just enough information to allow readers to decide about the usefulness and quality of your materials without having to look at them. (Consider the work’s purpose, contents, audience, special features, weaknesses/biases/strengths.)
- Your bibliography should include articles from scholarly journals, as well as books.
- DO NOT INCLUDE: finding aids or reference works, such as indexes, encyclopedias, and bibliographies.
- Use the correct form (including spacing and indentation) for each entry.
- See Turabian for annotations: p. 174, sect. 9.36.
- Use Turabian chapters 9 & 11 for proper bibliographic forms. Exploit examples in chapter 11.
- Use the examples shown here.
- Avoid justified right-hand margins; they distort spacing.
- Do NOT create two bibliographies, one for annotated sources and one for non-annotated ones. Put all sources in alphabetical order in one list, and annotate those that you wish (or are required) to annotate.
- Do NOT attempt to read every word in every source; it is NOT necessary. You are doing preliminary work. Exploit the introduction, table of contents, foreword, conclusion, index, and parts of key chapters to decide how the work is useful in researching your topic (just as you would in deciding on the usefulness of any source).
- Use third person and present tense where appropriate. (FOR EXAMPLE, “Smith covers the war and argues that . . . .”)
- Do not use such notes as “Interlibrary Loan has not yet provided this source” or “Based on what I have read so far in this book . . . .”
- Do not write too narrow annotations, i.e., ones that focus only on your research topic and not on the source in general; however, it often works well to provide a brief comment on the book and to relate the book to the proposed topic.
