Creating an Annotated Bibliography
Developing an Annotated Bibliography
About Bibliographies in General
About Annotated Bibliographies
Samples of "Descriptive" versus "Conclusive" Annotations
Using Style Manuals
Developing an Annotated Bibliography
In addition to standard research papers, CMU faculty frequently ask students to develop annotated bibliographies on topics associated with their courses, and annotated bibliographies are an excellent way to frame a literature review assignment. The following discussion, written by Professor George E. Kennedy, provides a thorough explanation of two types of annotated bibliographies and illustrates both types of bibliography entries with examples. Please note, however, that you should always follow the specific guidelines or instructions for preparing an annotated bibliography that are provided by a CMU faculty.
About Bibliographies in General
Bibliographies are lists of published works; they may be articles in periodicals (journals, magazines, newspapers--anything published at distinct intervals or periods of time), books (written by single or multiple authors), editions (also books, but collections of articles written by several people and collected by editors), reports (written by government agencies or private concerns), government documents (the Congressional Record, the text of legislation, regulations of a particular agency). Inclusive bibliographies (a list of all available published work on any one subject) are rare; instead they are usually selected, meaning that someone has chosen to list only the major works, or the most important works, or the most recent works--whatever system of selection seems most useful for the document being written. At the end of some published works or at the end of chapters or segments of published works, you will often see a bibliography of the works that the author or authors have cited (referred to and acknowledged) within the text. These bibliographies are usually called Works Cited or simply References.
About Annotated Bibliographies
An annotated bibliography is different. It also lists published works written about a particular subject, but it includes a paragraph for each entry that summarizes the important findings and conclusions the authors of the works have come to. They state what work the authors performed, how basically they performed it, and what they found out or were able to conclude about the meaning of the work. They do not simply list the topics of the authors' discussions--without stating the significance of the authors' analysis of the data. In other words, annotated bibliographies are conclusive, not simply descriptive. Some students will find useful sources that are in fact simply collections of data and records and often wonder how they will say something conclusive about them. In annotations of those kinds of sources, students can comment conclusively on how valuable and timely the collection of data is, how it is presented to make for easy understanding or access, etc.
The important thing to remember here is that the annotations should be helpful to you in the future and theoretically to other researchers who may want to work on similar projects in the future. Therefore, they should be evaluative and not simply a list of topics. Also you should not include a source that is dated (old) unless it is a classic in the field of your study. In cases of problems that are ongoing and that change points of view or new developments regularly, something two or three years old could be considered old and out of date.
Samples of "Descriptive" versus "Conclusive" (a.k.a. Evaluative or Critical) Annotations
Contrast the following annotations to see the difference between the first, which is simply descriptive, and the second, which is conclusive (citations appear in the APA format):
Carson, R. (1962). The obligation to endure. In Silent spring (pp. 5-13). Boston:
Houghton Mifflin.
Carson talks about the overuse of chemicals to kill insects and other pests that invade and harm the nation's environment and agriculture. She thinks that chemicals that people once thought would control disease in plants are now going to cause another worse kind of disease in humans. She uses some history and current realities to back up her points.
Carson, R. (1962). The obligation to endure. In Silent spring (pp. 5-13). Boston: Houghton Mifflin.
Carson, in this chapter from Silent Spring, claims that chemical pollution, especially in the form of pesticides, is "the most alarming of all man's assaults upon the environment" (152). Modern science's creation of new chemicals (almost five hundred a day) and their subsequent use--two hundred of them alone used to kill pests of all kinds--have begun to alter the biological environment irrevocably, so that nuclear warfare is no longer the most certain means of wiping out life on the planet. Instead, the real killer becomes the many poisons we use to wipe out pests. These already are causing and will cause ultimately all kinds of genetic alterations in plant and animal life that will bring about the end of life as we know it. Carson does not advocate a complete end to chemical pest control, but she does insist that chemicals should be used only after they have been thoroughly investigated, tested, and understood. And then they should be used only by those who understand how to use them and their potential for both benefit and harm.
Clearly the second annotation is longer than the first, but it is also conclusive. It doesn't take much time or space simply to list topics an author talks about; it takes more time and space to say conclusively what the author thought about, how he/she thought about it, and what it finally meant for the piece of writing he/she produced. Useful annotations are written in no other way.
Following are three annotations from bibliographies written by students. The first is not conclusive; it is merely descriptive and topical and therefore relatively useless. The second two are thorough, specific, and conclusive; they are well written and very useful.
Bernhard, A. (1959). The evaluation of common stocks. New York: Simon and Schuster.
Deals with common stock valuation. There are four sections on evaluating stocks which the author points out. One section is devoted to investment surveys done by professionals and the common investor. It is a great source for listing the fallacious generalizations about common stock evaluation.
Kolowich, M. E. (1991). Where are the business benefits of Windows? PC Computing, 4, 13.
Michael Kolowich expressed his concerns about the Windows environment in "Where Are the Business Benefits of Windows?" Within six months of its introduction, one million copies of Windows were sold. What Kolowich saw was that people were not using the new Windows system to its full capacity and were using it more as a "fancy DOS shell." Microsoft makes Windows attractive for people to buy and people did, but once they got it up and running they weren't seeing any benefits. Big named applications such as Lotus 1-2-3 are leery of writing programs for Windows and thus haven't done so. Developers have not seen any tangible business profits of moving to a graphical computing environment. Thus, Windows application development is slow and businesses have little reason to switch over. Therefore, the urgency to convert is lacking. Attitudes will have to change to overcome the lack in any all-out conversion to a graphical interface standard, and software publishers will have to be willing to move their applications to the Windows environment.
Crawford, M. (1986, November 21). United States floats proposal to help prevent global ozone depletion. Science, 234, 927-930.
Crawford reports on the current findings concerning ozone depletion as well as the U.S. proposal for a plan of action which could eventually solve this problem in the future. The deterioration of the ozone is still continuously spreading at a noticeable rate. In just six years (from 1978 to 1984), the average rate of depletion in the ozone surged from 0.1% to 0.5%. With only this small increase, the people born before 1985 are projected to develop "an additional one million melanoma and non-melanoma skin cancers" which will result in 20,000 deaths (928). For future generations, the estimated statistics are even higher; the people born between 1985 and 2029 will receive 8.3 million more "skin cancer cases," resulting in 167,000 deaths (928). The only sensible solution to the ozone problem is the immediate elimination of hazardous CFCs from the entire planet. Knowing the usefulness of CFC compounds, the United States has launched an aggressive research campaign to find useful and viable substitutes for CFCs by the year 2005.
Remember: you do not have to read the entire work, especially if it is very long, to write a conclusive annotation. Much conclusive information may be gleaned from summaries, abstracts, introductions, and conclusions that the work provides. This note, however, does not invite you to rely on those elements entirely to use the source meaningfully in your research.
Using Style Manuals
Bibliographic styles differ, some requiring upper case letters for all significant letters of the title, some requiring periods after every element of the entry, some requiring titles of books and periodicals (magazines and newspapers) be put in italics or underlined--which amounts to the same thing, but other styles have adopted new conventions.
For most work you will have to do, the American Psychological Association (APA) style, the Modern Language Association (MLA) style, or the Chicago Manual of Style conventions will serve well. For example, the numbers in parentheses in the Crawford article annotated immediately above follows the current practice of the MLA in citing page numbers of specific quotes or other information a researcher needs to cite. Other styles use different conventions, and you need to understand what they are, given your field of interest, and be consistent in using them.
It would be useful for you to buy or get access to a handbook on your particular citation style, such as the MLA Handbook for Writers of Research Papers.But there are some universals that you need to follow:
All entries should be arranged alphabetically by authors' last names, then first names. In the case where there is no author named, alphabetize the entry by the first substantive word of the title. Do not alphabetize by use of articles, such as "the," "a," "an." The entries and annotations should make clear how the information contained in the entries will be useful to your work. Don't include works that may lie generally and vaguely in the area of your interest. Choose specific and useful sources that will be truly useful to exploring the problem you have defined.
Professor George E. Kennedy
Department of English
Washington State University, Pullman
Spring 1998
(Adapted with permission of the author)
