Annotated bibliography

An annotated bibliography is a written document that presents sources to a reader and that helps you, the writer, to process those sources for a research paper. You will only submit one draft (no revision) of your Annotated Bibliography. Your Annotated Bibliography must present four reliable sources that you have found through research that are relevant to the texts and/or theme that you are writing on in the “Essay: Revised and Expanded.”

A credible source is one authored by a professional who has researched the topic. In this case, the topic may be: the text; the author or director; other, related works of literature or films; the culture and/or period in which the text was produced; the theme. Sources may be: print, video, or web media; articles, books, interviews, lectures, presentations, or reports. On the open Web, you may use a search engine (e.g., Google) for your research, but then you will have to determine whether the resulting sources are credible and those sources may be behind a pay wall. You may also (or instead) use GALILEO and/or the GSU Library Catalog and Library Databases to find credible sources to which you already have access courtesy of student fees. At least one of your four sources must be not only credible but also scholarly, peer-reviewed. Recommended Library Databases for this assignment include: Academic Search Complete; Bloom’s Literature; Films on Demand; History Reference Center; JSTOR; Literary Reference Center; Literature Criticism Online; Literature Online; Literature Resource Center; MLA International Bibliography. You may find the Georgia State University Library’s Literature: General Research Guide helpful for this assignment.

Simply taking the first four sources that you find on your topic will probably not help you in the long run. You may need to try different databases and key terms for your searches, skim through many titles, and even read a number of sources before you find ones that prove useful for developing the “Essay: Revised and Expanded.” Keep in mind that one source can lead you to others; use sources’ endnotes, footnotes, and bibliographies to help you find other sources.

When you find a source that you want to use, copy or create an MLA-style (8th edition), end-of-text citation of the source to include in your Annotated Bibliography with hanging indentation. Follow the Purdue Online Writing Lab’s MLA Guide for MLA Works Cited Pages. You may also refer to this Example of an Annotated Bibliography.docx. Format your Annotated Bibliography in MLA style, using double (2.0) line spacing for the heading, the title Annotated Bibliography, citations, and annotations. Insert a header with your surname and page number aligned right. List your sources in alphabetical order by the first letter of the citation (the first letter of the surname of the author or of the first main word of the title if the source does not identify an author).

Below each citation, write one, first-line indented paragraph of about 200 words (an annotation). Summarize the source’s main ideas and key examples in mostly your own words. You may include one or two short, carefully selected, and clearly incorporated quotations from the source. In the same paragraph, explain why you find the source helpful and how you plan to respond to or otherwise use the source in the “Essay: Revised and Expanded.”