Since scholars and professors are in jobs where they do intense amounts of research on all sorts of topics, they will often produce annotated bibliographies on the topics they have researched and share those annotated bibliographies with others in the profession.
This helps save other professors and scholars the time and energy of having to research these topics from scratch if they intend to conduct research related to that topic or if they just want to be more informed about that topic. For instance, the following link takes you to the Bedford Bibliography of Research in Online Writing Instruction , in which a variety of contributors documented and annotated over scholarly articles on the topic of online writing instruction published in the last 25 years.
When teachers ask students to write annotated bibliographies, though, they are doing it for different reasons:. To write about any subject matter, a person needs to be informed about it. Then, only after writing whatever it is they can come up with on their own do they eventually add in some stuff from sources they were told to find, merely using those sources to prove or back up what they already wrote. The result of this is that some students write some really weak essays.
They are weak because they begin writing the essay before they even knew very much about their topic. Moreover, they may only look at sources that convey perspectives they already agree with, never bothering to form a fresh perspective by listening to the voices coming from all sides of an issue. In short, the ideas and opinions they express in their essays end up being uninformed and uneducated.
By writing an annotated bibliography, you are taking time to select sources on their own merits, assessing their relevance and credibility on your topic, before you attempt to make use of them.
Moreover, research should be used by students to become more genuinely knowledgeable about the subject matter they research. Not until one is more knowledgeable about their topic should they begin to develop a thesis, a perspective, on that topic to write about.
Thus, writing an annotated bibliography is a way to ensure that you have become sufficiently knowledgeable about your topic before you try to write about it; it is a way to make sure you are writing from a stance of expertise on the subject matter, which is a much more authoritative and persuasive stance from which to write. Other times, students might do their research first, but they never take the time to separate their views and perspectives from those of the sources they are writing about.
They may, then, confuse what ideas and information came from other sources and what came from their own experiences. To learn about your topic : Writing an annotated bibliography is excellent preparation for a research project.
Just collecting sources for a bibliography is useful, but when you have to write annotations for each source, you're forced to read each source more carefully. You begin to read more critically instead of just collecting information. At the professional level, annotated bibliographies allow you to see what has been done in the literature and where your own research or scholarship can fit.
To help you formulate a thesis: Every good research paper is an argument. The purpose of research is to state and support a thesis. So, a very important part of research is developing a thesis that is debatable, interesting, and current. Writing an annotated bibliography can help you gain a good perspective on what is being said about your topic. By reading and responding to a variety of sources on a topic, you'll start to see what the issues are, what people are arguing about, and you'll then be able to develop your own point of view.
To help other researchers : Extensive and scholarly annotated bibliographies are sometimes published. They provide a comprehensive overview of everything important that has been and is being said about that topic. As you can see now, bibliographies and annotations are really a series of organized steps. Use these examples as your guide to creating an annotated bibliography that makes you look like the expert you are! MLA Example.
APA Example. CBE Example. We consulted these works while writing this handout. Please do not use this list as a model for the format of your own reference list, as it may not match the citation style you are using. For guidance on formatting citations, please see the UNC Libraries citation tutorial. We revise these tips periodically and welcome feedback. American Psychological Association. Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association.
Bell, I. Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press. Bizzell, Patricia, and Bruce Herzburg. Bedford Bibliography for Teachers of Writing , 3rd ed. Boston: Bedford Books. Language-Teaching Bibliography. Cambridge: Cambridge University. Cornell University. Last updated September 25, Gibaldi, Joseph. Grasso, Michael. University of Maryland-Baltimore County. Department of Computer Science. Huth, Edward.
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