An annotated bibliography is a list of citations followed by a brief summary or analysis of your sources, aka annotations. The annotation gives information about the relevance and quality of the sources you cited through a 150-250 word description or interpretation of the source.
The act of compiling a bibliography of this type involves:
- Choosing an annotated bibliography topic. Annotated bibliography topics are sometimes chosen by teachers or professors. There are times, however, when educators allow students or researchers to choose their own topics. Choose a topic which interests you to make the assignment more enjoyable to organize and complete.
- Seeking out relevant resources that directly correlate with a research topic
- Creating a citation for each resource. The citation includes the title, author’s name, date of publication, and other identifiable information. Citations can be formatted in MLA format, or another style your teacher or professor recommends.
- Writing a very brief analysis or summary of each source
In many nonfiction books and texts, authors provide readers with a suggested listing of resources for further reading. This is somewhat similar to an annotated bibliography, except a bibliography of this type takes it one step further and includes a brief write-up (about a paragraph long) about each source.