OVERVIEW

As part of Paper #3, you will conduct research driven by the research question you came up with for your proposal. Conducting your research prior to planning your paper is key to producing a text that illuminates your findings and perspective, rather than confirming your biases.

INTRODUCTION

In the annotated bibliography, compile 7-12 sources that support, refute, complicate, illustrate, or extend your argument or the argument to which you are responding. Additionally, include the source you intend to respond to in the bibliography. Format the annotated bibliography as an MLA-style Works Cited page, with 2-3 sentence annotations for each entry. At least one sentence should summarize the source, and at least one sentence should explain how you intend to use it in your paper.

Remember that sources you locate via the library database are helpfully pre-formatted in the MLA Works Cited style for you. 

3.20 Review: How to Compile an Annotated Bibliography (READ)

OVERVIEW

This item is a review of section 2.26. An annotated bibliography is a list that details the research you have conducted, with an explanation of how and why you intend to you the sources you have researched. The goal is to foreground the research process – to complete your research before writing the paper. In this way, you will then be able to write in an informed way that effectively utilizes your research and achieves your writing goal. In most academic writing, you should complete your research before writing a draft. Doing so constitutes good scholarship. Compiling an annotated bibliography ensures that you do so.

INSTRUCTIONS

Click the link below to read

How to Prepare an Annotated Bibliography: The Annotated Bibliography (CLICK) (Links to an external site.)

Pay particular attention to what the author writes in the sample annotated bibliography. Please note that although he writes in the APA style, your annotated bibliography will be formatted in the MLA style. Below is a sample annotated bibliography in the MLA style that I wrote as an undergraduate in literature. Pay particular attention to what I write in the comments on each entry – note that I write 1-2 sentences summarizing what the source is arguing, followed by 1-2 sentences explaining how I intend to use it.