Writing an Annotated Bibliography

Ana Ribero, Writing Center staff

Please keep in mind that these are only general guidelines; always defer to your professor's specifications for a given assignment. If you have any questions about the content represented here, please contact the Writing Centers so that we can address them for you.

What is an annotated bibliography?

An annotated bibliography is a list of sources (such as scholarly articles and/or books) that illustrates different points of view about a topic. Each citation is followed by an annotation—a brief (approximately 150 words) description and evaluation of the text. You can think of an annotated bibliography as a presentation of "the conversation" that scholars are having regarding a specific topic. Regardless of your chosen major, you will most likely encounter the annotated bibliography assignment at some point in your undergraduate or graduate college career. Don't panic. Annotated bibliographies can be virtually painless to write, granted that you leave yourself ample time to research your sources.

Your professor may have specific requirements for your annotated bibliography. As always, make sure that you read your assignment sheet carefully and that you speak with your professor or with a Writing Center consultant if you have any questions.

What is the purpose of an annotated bibliography?

Writing an annotated bibliography allows you to understand "the conversation" surrounding a topic that interests you. An annotated bibliography lets you see what has been done and said about your topic, and how your research could fit into the larger conversation.

Although your professor may assign an annotated bibliography as part of a research project or independently, the most valuable use of this type of assignment is to provide the background from where to begin a larger research project or paper.

The Research Process

You should allow plenty of time to research your sources for your annotated bibliography. The time you will spend researching depends on the number of sources that you need and on your ability to find relevant and useful sources. You should first locate books (or book chapters), scholarly articles, and other documents that contain information, ideas, or research about your topic. For more information about doing research, please visit our page on Research and Writing.

Before you review each text, read the text's summary and/or abstract to find out if the source is relevant to your research. You can usually find the summary of a book on a library's online catalog and the abstract of a scholarly article at the beginning of each article. If the summary or abstract shows that the source is relevant to your topic, continue reading the entire source making sure you take notes as you read. Remember to select sources that illustrate a variety of perspectives on your topic.

The Citation

Find out what citation style your professor requires for this assignment. For more information about how to cite sources in APA, MLA, Chicago (Turabian) Style, and CSE, please visit our page on Citation Styles. The sources on your annotated bibliography must be listed in alphabetical order. If your professor requires for your annotated bibliography to be divided into subheadings by topic, these must also be alphabetized.

The Annotation

The annotation is a summary and/or evaluation of the sources. Its length depends on your professor's requirements, but it usually ranges between 150-250 words. Your should plan to write the annotation for each text when you still have the text fresh in your mind.

The annotation usually contains the following components:

A brief summary of the points of the article that are relevant to your research question. What does the author say about your research question/topic?
An evaluation of the source, where you analyze any assumptions the author makes and critically assess the reliability or validity of the author's claims.
A description of how the author's argument compares to other sources in your bibliography. How does the author contribute to "the conversation"? In what ways does the author agree or disagree with the other authors you cite? Where are there similarities and differences in the arguments the cited authors make?

Although it is OK to cite your source directly in your annotation, you should keep direct quotations to a minimum.

Sample Annotated Bibliography Entry (using MLA citation style)

Anzaldúa, Gloria. Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza. 2nd ed. San Francisco: Aunt Lute, 1999.

Anzaldúa describes the concept of borderlands as the place where hybrid rhetorics are used to create and express transnational identities. She specifically discusses how the border between southern Texas and northern Mexico defines the hybrid identities of the border dwellers. Furthermore, Anzaldúa sees this border not only as the boundary between two nations, but also as the socially constructed divide that enforces white hegemony over Mexicans, Indians, and other minorities. In her prose, Anzaldúa exemplifies the hybridity of her people by utilizing a hybridized rhetoric with which she situates herself outside any essentialist notion of nationality, culture, ethnicity, and identity. Unlike González and other borderland scholars, Anzaldúa claims that borderlands exist wherever there is a conflict between two or more forces that influence a person's identity. Therefore, Anzaldúa states, everyone lives in a sort of borderland—whether literal or metaphorical—where the power relationship between the dominant and the minority must be analyzed and challenged.

González, Norma. I Am My Language: Discourse of Women and Children in the Borderlands. Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 2001.

González analyzes the city of Tucson as a rhetorical borderland. She studies how the discursive practices of women and children reflect the hybridized linguistic and cultural practices of borderland dwellers. González proposes that these border citizens must invent and utilize new and hybridized rhetorics to accurately depict and express their transnational circumstances. Although González acknowledges that the metaphor of borderlands has often been used to describe metaphorical borders, she claims that this treatment of borderlands serves to normalize the concept of hybridity. She admits that thinking of borderlands in metaphorical terms implies that all people lives in borderlands of some kind, "betwixt and between the multiple aspects of our often compartmentalized lives" (14). Contrary to Anzaldúa, González claims that when borderlands are normalized the "political reality of their existence [is] downplayed" (12). Therefore, she emphasizes the importance of returning to literal border analysis in order to demystify and repoliticize the idea of borderlands.

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