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SPAN 407: Modern Spanish & Spanish-American Poetry (Ramos): Annotated Bibliographies

What is an Annotated Bibliography?

The Purdue OWL says, "....depending on the purpose of your bibliography, some annotations may summarize, some may assess or evaluate a source, and some may reflect on the source’s possible uses for the project at hand. Some annotations may address all three of these steps. Consider the purpose of your annotated bibliography and/or your instructor’s directions when deciding how much information to include in your annotations."

In short, an annotation should be a section under your citation in a bibliography that is somewhere between two sentences and three paragraphs in length. It includes the scope of the resource (how long, who is it meant for, are there pictures, charts, data?), the general reading level or audience, and perhaps some summary. It should also include some sort of critique from you: was it helpful? Was it lacking something? Would you recommend it for "x" audience?

See this example from the Purdue OWL:

Lamott, Anne. Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life. Anchor Books, 1995.

Lamott's book offers honest advice on the nature of a writing life, complete with its insecurities and failures. Taking a humorous approach to the realities of being a writer, the chapters in Lamott's book are wry and anecdotal and offer advice on everything from plot development to jealousy, from perfectionism to struggling with one's own internal critic. In the process, Lamott includes writing exercises designed to be both productive and fun.
Lamott offers sane advice for those struggling with the anxieties of writing, but her main project seems to be offering the reader a reality check regarding writing, publishing, and struggling with one's own imperfect humanity in the process. Rather than a practical handbook to producing and/or publishing, this text is indispensable because of its honest perspective, its down-to-earth humor, and its encouraging approach.
Chapters in this text could easily be included in the curriculum for a writing class. Several of the chapters in Part 1 address the writing process and would serve to generate discussion on students' own drafting and revising processes. Some of the writing exercises would also be appropriate for generating classroom writing exercises. Students should find Lamott's style both engaging and enjoyable. (https://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/614/03/)

Writing an Annotated Bibliography

Use Cornell University Library's Annotated Bibliography Guide  to help you create your annotated bibliography. 

Here are some key ideas to keep in mind:  

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. Author (what are their credentials? Their biases?)
  2. Audience (is the book intended for popular reading? For experts?)
  3. Comparisons between this source and other sources you are annotating, and/or
  4. The relevance or usefulness of each source for your topic. 
     

Ideally, you should aim to cover at least a couple of these points and have ~150 words in each annotation. 

Make sure that your bibliography is in MLA style. This means that

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

Other useful resources include: the Purdue Online Writing Lab (OWL) and the UNC Writing Center.

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