NoodleTools for Students: Annotated Bibliography

Sometimes your teacher will request you create an annotated bibliography of the resources you have used for your research.

They may give you a specific format to use or questions to answer. In that case you need to go to your resource and "edit" it, and add the text to the bottom of the resource. You then need to answer the questions or complete the necessary paragraphs.

Purpose of an annotated bibliography
When set as an assignment, an annotated bibliography allows you to get acquainted with the material available on a particular topic.

Depending on your specific assignment, an annotated bibliography might:

• review the literature of a particular subject;
• demonstrate the quality and depth of reading that you have done;
• exemplify the scope of sources available—such as journals, books, web sites and magazine articles;
• highlight sources that may be of interest to other readers and researchers;
• explore and organise sources for further research.

What does an annotated bibliography look like?
Each entry in an annotated biliography has two components: 

• a bibliographic citation followed by 
• a short paragraph (an annotation) that includes concise descriptions and evaluations of each source. 
• The annotation usually contains a brief summary of content and a short analysis or evaluation. Depending on your assignment you may be asked to summarise, reflect on, critique, evaluate or analyse each source. While an annotation can be as brief as one sentence, a paragraph is more usual.  

As with a normal reference list or bibliography, an annotated bibliography is usually arranged alphabetically according to the author’s last name.

An annotated bibliography summary should be about 100 - 200 words per citation—check with your lecturer/tutor as this may vary between faculties and assessments. Please also check with your lecturer about the elements each annotation should include.

Steps to writing an annotated bibliography

• Choose your sources - locate and record citations to sources of research that may contain useful information and ideas on your topic.
• Review the items that you’ve collected in your search.
• Write the citation using the correct style.
• Write the annotation.