Annotated Bibliographies

Annotated Bibs: The Basics

1. Take a few minutes to read the following articles:
   • “Write an Annotated Bibliography.” Robert E. Kennedy Library, California Polytechnic State University, lib.calpoly.edu/support/how-to/write-an-annotated-bibliography/.
   • “Annotated Bibliographies.” Purdue OWL: Purdue Online Writing Lab, Purdue University, owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/614/01/.

2. With your table partner, discuss the following questions:

1. What is an annotated bibliography?
2. Why would a researcher use an annotated bibliography?
3. What do you expect the requirements of your assigned annotated bibliography to be?

3. We will share and discuss as a class.

Annotated Bibs: Formatting

Review the sample annotated bibliography provided. With your partner, use it to discuss the following:

1. How are citations organized on the bibliography?
2. When an article lists no author, with what does the citation begin?
3. What is the title of the document? How is this different from the MLA reference list you would expect to see with a research paper?
4. What do you think is meant by the term hanging indent? How do hanging indents affect the readability of citations and annotations on the annotated bibliography?
5. Do you notice anything else about the organization and/or format of the annotated bibliography? Are you surprised by anything you see on this annotated bibliography?

Annotated Bibliographies: The Rubric

For this activity, you will practice scoring annotated bibliography entries using a rubric.

Annotated Bibliographies: EasyBib and Google Docs

To add an annotation to a citation in EasyBib, open the citation in Editing mode and select +Add Annotation.

To change your margin in Google Docs, put your cursor at the beginning of the line of text you want to indent. Then, move the blue rectangle on the ruler above your page a half-inch to the right.