An annotated bibliography is a bibliography that incorporates, not just citations for the resources you have identified, but also annotations that provide information about those sources.
While there are many different approaches to annotated bibliographies, annotations should generally....
- Analyze and evaluate, not just summarize, the resource being described;
- Reflect your own experience with a source (don't rely on abstracts, reviews, or summaries, even AI- generated ones);
- Address considerations such as:
- The source's arguments (What is the author arguing? Are they convincing? Is it well-sourced?);
- Comparisons between this source and other sources, either in your bibliography or more generally;
- The relevance or usefulness of this source for studying the topic at hand; and/or
- Any other information about the source that struck you as particularly notable or useful.
Depending on your professor's specific instructions, you should typically aim to cover at least a couple of these points and have ~150 words in each annotation.
Make sure that your bibliography is in the correct style. This means that
- Your citations should follow the MLA (or other style) standard for whatever type of source you are citing;
- 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.
