MLA Bibliography-Annotated Bibliography

An annotation is a summary and/or evaluation. Therefore, an annotated bibliography includes a summary and/or evaluation of each of the sources. Depending on your project or the assignment, your annotations may do one or more of the following.

• Summarize: Some annotations merely summarize the source. What are the main arguments? What is the point of this book or article? What topics are covered? If someone asked what this article/book is about, what would you say? The length of your annotations will determine how detailed your summary is. For more help, see our handout on paraphrasing sources.

• Assess: After summarizing a source, it may be helpful to evaluate it. Is it a useful source? How does it compare with other sources in your bibliography? Is the information reliable? Is this source biased or objective? What is the goal of this source? For more help, see our handouts on evaluating resources.

• Reflect: Once you've summarized and assessed a source, you need to ask how it fits into your research. Was this source helpful to you? How does it help you shape your argument? How can you use this source in your research project? Has it changed how you think about your topic?

Your annotated bibliography may include some of these, all of these, or even others. If you're doing this for a class, you should get specific guidelines from your instructor.

Why should I write an annotated bibliography?

• To learn about your topic: Writing an annotated bibliography is excellent preparation for a research project. Just collecting sources for a bibliography is useful, but when you have to write annotations for each source, you're forced to read each source more carefully. You begin to read more critically instead of just collecting information. At the professional level, annotated bibliographies allow you to see what has been done in the literature and where your own research or scholarship can fit. To help you formulate a thesis: Every good research paper is an argument. The purpose of research is to state and support a thesis. So a very important part of research is developing a thesis that is debatable, interesting, and current. Writing an annotated bibliography can help you gain a good perspective on what is being said about your topic. By reading and responding to a variety of sources on a topic, you'll start to see what the issues are, what people are arguing about, and you'll then be able to develop your own point of view.

• To help other researchers: Extensive and scholarly annotated bibliographies are sometimes published. They provide a comprehensive overview of everything important that has been and is being said about that topic. You may not ever get your annotated bibliography published, but as a researcher, you might want to look for one that has been published about your topic.

Annotated Bibliography Format

• The sample below shows the format for an annotated bibliography that is required as "pre-search" before writing the paper without an outline. If an outline or cover page is included, omit the 4 headings (name, instructor(s), course, date) as they are included in the outline or cover page.

• Margins are 1"

• Font style in the sample is a clear font and is acceptable at the discretion of the instructor. Our requirement is Times New Roman Size 12. It must match the rest of the paper.

• Line spacing is double with no extra spacing.

• The header is the same as the basic paper setup--student's last name, a space, and the page number, right justified.

• The four headings, if needed, are left justified.

• The title of the paper is centered beneath the headings, or is at the top if headings are not needed.

• The text "An Annotated Bibliography" is centered below the title.

• The entries are in alphabetical order, left justified, with a hanging indent (see the Works Cited format video if you need help setting the indent with the ruler in Google docs).

• Each entry has an one-half inch indented paragraph style summary beneath the source information. Note that the paragraph margin lines up with the second line of the source informations hanging indent.