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Annotated Bibliographies

Find resources for creating annotated bibliographies

Annotated Bibliographies

Annotated Bibliographies are common in academic work, from the high school assignments to PhD-level research. They are more than a simple bibliography because they required that the researcher critically evaluate the source and why they are using it in their research. It can be extremely useful for researchers to make annotated bibliographies, even if it is not required for their assignment, as it can remind the researcher what certain sources were about and why they thought they would be useful, assist in identifying research gaps, and help structure a strong foundation for further research.  

 

Below are the elements of an Annotated Bibliography. These are general guidelines. Your assignment may have other requirements, so follow those requirements over what is suggested here. 

Annotated Bibliography Dissected

Below is a sample of an Annotated Bibliography entry. See below for further discussion on what each section entails:

Citation

Summary 

Significance & Evaluation

 

Alhasnawi, Sami, Hacer Hande Uysal, and Batuhan Selvi. 2023. “English as the Academic Lingua Franca (ELFA) for Research Publication Purposes: Voices from Iraq and Turkey.” Journal of English as a Lingua Franca 12 (2): 183–217. https://doi.org/10.1515/jelf-2023-2014.


This article surveys the prevalence and attitudes towards the the treatment of English as the Academic Lingua Franca, especially in how non-Anglophone scholars navigate the issue. The context of and problems associated with EFLA are discussed, and surveys researchers from Turkey and Iran to determine how EFLA affects their careers. This article highlights the Epistemic Injustice of the EFLA system and in the scholarly publishing, but it also empathizes the existence of quality scholarly work that is published in Non-English languages. The article does not provide information on how to address the injustices of the EFLA system, and only surveys researchers in the context of Turkey and Iran.  This source pairs well with Saier & FÓ“rber (2020) “A Large-Scale Analysis of Cross-lingual Citations in English Papers” as it gives a more grounded perspective of how the lack of Non-English citations affect researchers. 

Citation

The first element is the citation. Every source you used for any academic project must be properly cited. See the "Citation" page of this guide to find the style information. You should also look into using a Citation Manager! It is extremely important that you remain consistent in your citation style for the Annotated Bibliography. If one source is in MLA, then all sources should be in MLA. 

Summary

The annotated bibliography requires a brief summary of the resource so that readers know what this resource will cover. It should be, at most, a few sentences long.  This section should briefly cover the main argument and findings of the article in your own words, and should not be a copy of the source’s abstract.  See the "Summary" section for more information. 

 

Significance & Evaluation

This is the most important aspect of the Annotated Bibliography. It should be 3-5 sentences, and it should move beyond summarizing the resource and instead put it in the context of the research field and your research. You should be able to answer why, out of all the sources in the world on your topic, you are choosing to use this one. This can take the form of an explanation on how you plan to use this resource, what research gaps this source addresses, how this source relates to other sources in the bibliography, etc. This section is wholly unique to you and your research topic, and should be the strongest element of your annotated bibliography.  This is also the time to take a deeper dive into the author(s), publisher, source. etc. to investigate the reliability of the source. See the "Significance & Evaluation" section for further discussion. 

Annotated Bibliography Entries Hall of Fame

GARDNER , EDMUND GARRATT , The National Idea in Italian Literature ( Manchester , 1921 ) , Manchester University Press , 51 pp .

The author has no real conception of what nationalism is . He merely picks at random some expressions of patriotism in Dante , Petrarch , Machiavelli , Alfieri , Mazzini , Gioberti and Carducci .

Pinson, K. S. (Koppel Shub). (1935). A bibliographical introduction to nationalism. New York: Columbia University Press.

Grace Ellison, "An Englishwoman in Angora" (1923),

a sentimental and unbalanced book constituting an admirable example of the way the Near Eastern question should not be treated. 

Earle, Edward. (ca. 1930) Nationalism in the Arab World Bibliography.