How to Write Annotated Bibliographies
Introduction
This handout will give suggestions of how to write annotated bibliographies. Individual instructors may give instructions which vary from these examples. Always check with your instructor to ensure that you are writing the bibliography as he/she wants it written.
Bibliography Style
Write your bibliographic entry according to the appropriate style guide (APA, MLA, Chicago/Turabian, etc) and add an annotation to each entry. The annotation describes the essential details of the work and its relevance to the topic. For more information on APA, MLA and Chicago/Turabian, consult our guides on these styles.
Why are you writing an annotated bibliography?
As a student, you are normally writing an annotated bibliography as an indication of the sources you intend to use for an assignment, paper or thesis. In this case, your purpose is to write an informative or descriptive annotation.
What an annotation should include:
- Complete bibliographic information.
- Some or all of the following:
- Information to explain the authority and/or qualifications of the author. For example: Dr. William Smith, a history professor at XYZ University, based his book on twenty years of research.
- Scope and main purpose of the work.
- Any biases that you detect.
- Intended audience and level of reading difficulty.
- Evaluation or why you feel this work is suitable for your topic (For more on evaluation, see How to Evaluate Information Resources)
Sample Informative/Descriptive Annotation
An Informative/descriptive annotation describes the content of the work without judging it. It does point out distinctive features.
London, Herbert. "Five Myths of the Television Age." Television Quarterly 10 (1) Spring 1982: 81-89.Herbert London, the Dean of Journalism at New York University and author of several books and articles, explains how television contradicts five commonly believed ideas. He uses specific examples of events seen on television, such as the assassination of John Kennedy, to illustrate his points. His examples have been selected to contradict such truisms as: "seeing is believing"; "a picture is worth a thousand words"; and "satisfaction is its own reward." London uses logical arguments to support his ideas which are his personal opinion. He doesn't refer to any previous works on the topic. London's style and vocabulary would make the article of interest to any reader.
Critical Annotation
In other cases, annotated bibliographies are written to assess the literature on a chosen topic more broadly. Here, the compiler of the annotated bibliography would normally be more critical and evaluative when discussing the works, in considering not only how a book, article, website, etc. is relevant to an assignment, but how well the work stands up aginst most of the published works in a particular field of study
In addition to the suggestion above, this type of annotation would more specifically include:
- How the work relates and compares to other works on the topic
- How or whether the work would be useful to others exploring the topic
Sample Critical Annotation
In addition to "What an annotation should include," a critical annotation evaluates the usefulness of the work for a particular audience or situation. The words that are in bold indicate what has been added to the descriptive annotation to make it a critical annotation.
London, Herbert. "Five Myths of the Television Age." Television Quarterly 10 (1) Spring 1982: 81-89.Herbert London, the Dean of Journalism at New York University and author of several books and articles, explains how television contradicts five commonly believed ideas. He uses specific examples of events seen on television, such as the assassination of John Kennedy, to illustrate his points. His examples have been selected to contradict such truisms as: "seeing is believing"; "a picture is worth a thousand words"; and "satisfaction is its own reward." London uses logical arguments to support his ideas which are his personal opinion. He doesn't refer to any previous works on the topic; however, for a different point of view, one should refer to Joseph Patterson's, "Television is Truth" (The Journal of Television 45 (6) November/December 1995: 120-135).London's style and vocabulary would make the article of interest to any reader. The article clearly illustrates London's points, but does not explore their implications, leaving the reader with many unanswered questions.