The Annotated Bibliography + Bibliography
Preparing a Bibliography.
A bibliography is a list of sources that an author uses to research a topic. It includes all books, journals, Web sites, periodicals, and any other documents that you cite in a research essay. While the final bibliography often is developed at the end of the writing process, it is useful to start working on it early on. A good bibliography can help you keep track of sources you have consulted as well as sources you might have uncovered in doing your research that you would like to consult as you begin writing your paper. Here is what you should do:
Prepare a bibliography of at least 8-10 sources for your research essay. This bibliography should include:
The 2 sources that you consulted for the documents based essay (THE TWO SOURCES THAT I SENT)
It also must include two scholarly books about your topic, one of which you are reviewing in this module (USE THE BOOK THAT YOU REVIEW ) and another.
Any other additional scholarly materials.
Please note: You might add more sources to your bibliography as you continue to do research for your essay, and that you might remove some sources that you decide are not necessary to the final project. However, the bibliography that you submit at this stage of the research process should represent the majority of sources that you plan to include in your final essay.
Annotated Bibliography
This assignment might be one of the most important building blocks toward your final research essay because it starts to bring together all of the pieces that you have compiled so far. If all goes well, you will have completed about 40 percent of the research essay by the time the annotated bibliography is written. The second written assignment in this module will bring the research essay roughly 75 percent toward completion. Here’s what I’d like you to do:
1. Go back to the research topic statement Civil rights movement , and the research essay abstract you prepared
2. Review both of these pieces of writing, along with any instructor comments you received.
3. Use the two writings, along with additional thoughts you have gathered, to write a thesis statement for your final research essay. Consider this statement to be as close to your final thesis as possible. It should include a cause and effect statement.
4. BE SURE TO ADD YOUR CAUSE/EFFECT THESIS STATEMENT AT THE TOP OF THE ANNOTATED BIBLIOGRAPHY. The thesis and argument together should be about 250-400 words in length. Place them at the top of the bibliography that you prepared for Module 4. You are now ready to begin writing the annotated bibliography.
5. Purdue University’s Online Writing Lab defines an annotated bibliography as “a summary and/or evaluation of each of the sources” one uses for researching a topic. Historians and scholars of many other academic disciplines prepare annotated bibliographies to organize materials and thoughts, outline papers, and develop arguments. We will use the annotated bibliography as a means for developing your thesis and argument. Please do the following:
o Prepare a summary statement of 200 to 250 words for each of the sources in your bibliography. The statement should summarize the source and it should explain how that particular source will support your thesis and argument.
o You may include one or two key quotes from the source in your summary statement (which also is known as an annotation) as well as biographic material about the author, if that material is relevant to your research essay’s topic.
o Keep the annotated bibliography organized in alphabetical order for now. You will, however, probably want to start organizing your resources differently in the body of your paper as you start to do the final writing.
For further guidance on preparing your annotated bibliography, see Rampolla, chapter 3, pp. 29-31 as well as the Purdue Online Writing Lab .
Evaluation Criteria
Before submitting an assignment for this course please read the SUNY Empire State College statement on Academic Integrity and fulfill the Turnitin Requirements and Procedures. Please use the Chicago Style for citations, and take care to ensure that the citations are completed properly. In addition, please use Rampolla’s A Pocket Guide to Writing in History to help ensure that your work is of historical quality.
