3.4 Writing an Annotated Bibliography

The annotated bibilography itself is a document that lists your sources in alphabetical order (or alphabetized within groupings for specific categories). Begin each entry with a full, properly formatted citation using the American Sociological Association (ASA) citation style.

I often get questions about whether students can use alternate citation formats. Different journals use different formats, so it is not possible for academics to learn and become comfortable with just one citation style. Rather, we use multiple citation styles regularly. Often, an article manuscript will be written in a specific citation style for one journal only to have to be reformatted in a different style for another journal if it is rejected on the first submission. Learning new citation styles quickly is therefore an important lesson, and one reason why ASA is the only citation style I accept for this project.

After the citation style, there should be one to two paragraphs summarizing the article and its importance for your project. The strongest annotated bibliographies will draw substantive or thematic connections betwene sources, noting which articles are cited by others and which articles share important connections. This will help you develop the synthesis your literature review section for the paper requires. For more, see Dr. Raul Pacheco-Vega’s post on writing an annotated bibliography.