Causes of Conflict

Basic Guidelines for In-text Citations from the Purdue OWL: MLA Formatting Guide

Steps

Review the Materials

For each selection, write down a good summary of what it contains. If appropriate, add evaluative comments telling what is or is not covered, what particular viewpoint or school of thought is represented, any strengths or weaknesses you notice, and where it might fit into an overview of your topic. Be sure you have complete bibliographic information for each selection.

Write the Bibliography (Citations and Comments)

Arrange items in a logical order. Use the proper form for citations, and be consistent. Ask at the Research Help Desk if you are not sure of the bibliographical format for an item. 

What is an Annotated Bibliography

It is a bibliography, a list of your sources, you have chosen to support your research paper and is accompanied by annotations, or brief summaries of the content and main arguments of each source.

An annotated bibliography consists two things:

• The citation information (author, title, year published, type of material, etc.) for your resources you read and used for your research paper

• A summary/analysis of the content of those sources. Your summary should include the how and why each source is useful to your project.

Why do you need to include an Annotated Bibliography

• This paper requires that you use relevant, credible, and useful sources to support your position. Writing an annotation forces you to more carefully evaluate the usefulness of your sources and rationalize its use in your paper.

 If done as you find sources that are useful to your research, it can serve as a personal reference tool during the writing process

• • Your annotation should be detailed enough that you can quickly identify the ideas and arguements that stood out to you.

  • Haing well-written annoations will save you time. You won't alway have to reread a source to remind you whay you can more easily locate ideas and arguments that stood out to you, which can be handy when you are in the thick of writing a paper

 In an interdisciplinary program such as MALS, annotating your sources allows you to analyze the interdisciplinarity of your research

What should be included in your annotation?