PSYC 316: Drug Abuse: Brain & Behavior (Bitran): Citations & Annotations

APA Style Citation Guides 

Writing an Annotated Bibliography

Each annotation should analyze and evaluate, not just summarize, the resource you read.

 Annotations should reflect your own experience with a source – don’t rely on reviews or summaries. 

 Your annotations should address such areas as:

1. Arguments (what is the author arguing? do they do it well?);
2. Comparisons between this source and other sources you are annotating;
3. The relevance or usefulness of each source for your topic, and/or
4. Other information about the source that struck you as particularly notable or useful. 

Ideally, you should aim to cover at least a couple of these points and have ~200 words in each annotation. 

Make sure that your bibliography is in the correct style (APA). This means that

1. Your citations should follow the APA standard for whatever type of source you are citing;
    
2. Each entry should be correctly formatted: with any second line of the citation and your annotations indented, in alphabetical order, and double-spaced if your style calls for it. 

See the handout below for more tips and a sample bibliography: 

RefWorks

When conducting your research, it's important not to lose track of your sources of information! 

With RefWorks, you can import references from Holy Cross databases to create your own personal list of references and bibliographies for your papers. This will help you with formatting as well as with keeping track of all of the different sources you've drawn on for your research. 

A few RefWorks caveats and tips: 

• ALWAYS proofread your citations. RefWorks only knows what the database feeds it -- if there is anything wrong with the information in the database or other source you used, RefWorks will repeat that incorrect information. 
   
• Be aware of RefWorks' strengths and weaknesses. RefWorks works well for traditional, published sources of information. It is less accurate at recording the correct citation details and formats for things like websites and social media. 
   
• Actively curate your RefWorks library. As an initial step, you can absolutely do a quick export and walk away. But long-term, it's to your benefit to make use of folders and other organizational tools and to edit your references, to correct things like all-caps and misspellings and add relevant notes. Taking the time to do this at the front-end means that the process of converting those disparate references into a bibliography will go much more smoothly. 
   
• RefWorks will often import the author's official abstract or summary along with the citation. Be wary of this if you are using the annotated bibliographies feature, to make sure that the final bibliography includes your writing, not theirs. 

Need more help with RefWorks? You can always set up an appointment for a one-on-one "tutorial." 

You should also check out the helpful Research Guides below: