Research Paper Annotated Bibliography

41554Research Paper Annotated Bibliography

An annotated bibliography is a combination of two activities—to find reliable and credible sources and to create the bibliographic entry.

You will need to find three sources (any combination of books, scholarly journals or credible on-line sources) about your research paper topic.

1) Read the sources (I recommend that you also take notes in the form of notecards or handwritten or typed notes or annotations—notes—on printouts and photocopies of the sources—these notes will also be credited in a few weeks)

2) Create the bibliographic entry in MLA format (just as though it were for a works cited page). Use the online citation buttons and also double-check with a reliable source such as OWL at Purdue.

3) Write a short, critical paragraph (4-7 sentences) about each paragraph that explains the 1) content, 2) relevance, 3) accuracy and 4) quality of the source and/or 5) how it compares or contrasts with another source you annotated, and 6) how it might be used in the research paper. You do not have to do all 1-6 of these in each entry, but you should try to do at least 1, 2, 3, and 4.

The annotated bibliography should be typed, in MLA format, and about a page in length. It may be single-spaced.

Here is one example of an entry from a page on the Cornell University Library (the link with instructions is available on Blackboard in the Research Paper folder) :

Waite, Linda J., et al. “Nonfamily Living and the Erosion of Traditional Family Orientations Among Young Adults.” American Sociological Review, vol. 51, no. 4, 1986, pp. 541-554.
The authors, researchers at the Rand Corporation and Brown University, use data from the National Longitudinal Surveys of Young Women and Young Men to test their hypothesis that nonfamily living by young adults alters their attitudes, values, plans, and expectations, moving them away from their belief in traditional sex roles. They find their hypothesis strongly supported in young females, while the effects were fewer in studies of young males. Increasing the time away from parents before marrying increased individualism, self-sufficiency, and changes in attitudes about families. In contrast, an earlier study by Williams cited below shows no significant gender differences in sex role attitudes as a result of nonfamily living.
(taken from Cornell University Library)

Make sure to put the annotated bibliography in alphabetical order by author (or if no author, by title).

You will not use the annotated bibliography with the final paper.