A short guide to annotated bibliographies
hello and welcome to this short video about annotated bibliographies an annotated bibliography is a type of assignment that you may be particularly likely to encounter if you’re studying in the health sciences first of all let’s look at what an annotated bibliography is and what it isn’t for one it’s more than a straight bibliography a bibliography is an alphabetical list of all the materials you use to research a particular topic an annotated bibliography is more like a bibliography on steroids not only does an annotated bibliography contain all the same information about each source as a bibliography does but each entry has its own explanatory note or annotation an annotated bibliography should not be confused with the references or works cited page this is the page that you attach at the end of a paper that contains an alphabetical list of the sources that you actually cited in the body of the paper you cannot include sources in a reference page that you use to research your topic but didn’t actually use ideas or quotations from in the writing of your paper here we have an example of some entries that can be used either in a bibliography or an APA references page in both cases they would be formatted in the same way this one circled in red is the one that we’re going to look at more closely and examine in the context of an annotated bibliography here’s how the same entry might appear in an annotated bibliography inline with APA recommendations it’s formatted as a hanging indent a formatting style you can select by opening up the paragraph tab on the toolbar in Word 2010 and selecting hanging from the drop down indentation menu the second red arrow points to the annotation itself which in this case not only briefly summarizes the content of the source and its main finding but also offers an evaluation of the source in terms of its relevance to the topic being explored the sources that you choose to include in an annotated bibliography will be governed by the topic that you’ve set out to investigate the purpose of the annotated bibliography is to provide a fairly comprehensive but focused selection of the scholarly sources on a given topic for instance the previous article referred to about friendship quality and social development could be seen as pertinent to the topic of the effects of friendships on the development of self-esteem in adolescence so in this case I choose to include it in an annotated bibliography of sources that deal with that particular topic however I probably conclude this an article about the effects of friendship and the social development of toddlers is outside the scope of my focused topic and consequently would choose to exclude it from my annotated bibliography likewise if I was exploring the damaging effects of invasive marine species on the Great Lakes I’d probably choose to include an article I found about the spread of zebra mussels into the Great Lakes but I choose to exclude an article about hogweed as although it’s an invasive species that can be found in the Great Lakes region is a land-based plant not a marine creature or species
