InfoGuides: Literature Reviews and Field Statements: Annotated Bibliographies

Annotated Bibliographies

An Annotated Bibliography is a device for keeping track of your reading notes. Each entry in an annotated bibliography is comprised of:

a standard citation of a book or article (this is the bibliography part)
a paragraph or more of notes about the book or article (this is the annotation)

The following site offers an example of a very brief annotated bibliography entry: http://guides.library.cornell.edu/annotatedbibliography

What is an annotation?

An annotation is a brief summary of a text’s content and its contribution to your understanding of your topic.

You might think of the annotation as an abstract customized for your project. As you proceed with your research, you will need to remember or reconstruct the content of every source you read, the questions it sparked for you, any criticisms of the piece, and that source’s relationship to other items in your bibliography.

An annotation might answer the following questions:

What does this article/chapter/book argue?
How does the author make this argument? (Your answer to this question can be a brief note on the method used, texts or theoretical perspectives invoked, or structure of an argument.)
Why is this source worth including in your annotated bibliography?
Were any sections of the text particularly useful to you? Why?
Did you identify any problems or concerns with the evidence used or conclusions reached? Briefly summarize these.
How does this article/chapter/book relate to others you have located on your topic?

Zotero for Annotated Bibliographies

Zotero will format your annotated bibliography for you--you just need to enter your reading notes in Zotero and download the relevant citation style to your Zotero.

See Eastern Michigan's online guide for step-by-step instructions and some annotated bibliography styles not available via the Zotero style repository.

Where to put your annotations inside Zotero? Many of the annotated bib styles use the "Extra" field, but some use the Abstract field or the Notes field. If in doubt, run a few test bibliographies before you decide where to put your annotations.