Annotated bibliography consists of a citation followed by an annotation. An annotation is a short summary of a source.
Your bibliography should be arranged alphabetically and you should use the MLA format (Modern Language Association). If you are unfamiliar with this format, you should consult pages 561 to 565 in the Prentice Hall Guide for College Writers.
Guidelines for your Annotated Bibliography Research Project
Your audience for your annotated bibliography is academic; think of it as a guide for other college-level student researchers. Your bibliography should consist of the most significant sources of information you have located on your topic. You must have a minimum of one encyclopedia article (not Wikipedia, which is an automatic failure as is About.com, etc.), two general audience magazines (Time, Newsweek, Scientific American, etc.), two scholarly journals, one scholarly text (book), one governmental publication, and an article in a newspaper concerning your topic. You need a total of 10 sources; you must annotate each source. For this assignment Do not write more than one paragraph per source-roughly 80-150 words brevity is critical.
It is important that you include a variety of sources. Why? Because no topic is completely dominated by one form, method or type of information source. Another reason is that your grade will suffer significantly. For example, an annotated bibliography on Freedom of the Press would reflect the discovered literature on the topic: books on Freedom of the Press, organizations supporting Freedom of the Press; articles from magazines and newspapers and scholarly journals. Students should list the sources found to be the most useful as well as those that best represent your topic. Your annotated bibliography must be typed or computer-printed. No e-mail submissions, nor submissions sent as an e-mail attachment.
The following are approved topics for this assignment:
- Assisted Suicide
- Civil Liberties and Anti-Terrorism Measures
- Euthanasia
- Free Speech
- Unexploded munitions (primarily landmines)
You must not try to write about marijuana, gun control, abortion, or reproductive rights in general. Do not twist one of the above topics into gun control, abortion, or reproductive rights.