type of annotations and creating annotations

1. Annotated Bibliography
Athens State University Library

2. Abstracts vs. Annotations
Abstracts
• purely descriptive
summaries
– often found at the
beginning of scholarly
journal articles or in
periodical indexes
– Also commonly called
the article review
Annotations
• descriptive and critical
• describe the author's
point of view, authority,
or clarity and
appropriateness of
expression

3. What is an Annotated Bibliography
• An annotated bibliography is a list of citations to
books, articles, and documents
• Each citation is followed by a brief descriptive and
evaluative paragraph (the annotation).
• Purpose: to inform the reader of the relevance,
accuracy, and quality of the sources cited.
– Demonstrates that you have read critically and are
able to evaluate the importance/applicability of each
source with respect to your topic

4. Two Types
Analytical or critical
(CRAAP Assignment)
• Not only summarizes the
material, it analyzes what is
being said.
• Examines the strengths and
weaknesses of what is
presented as well as
describing the applicability
of the author's conclusions
to the research being
conducted.
Descriptive or informative
• Describes why the source is
useful for researching a
particular topic or question,
its distinctive features.
• In addition, it describes the
author's main arguments
and conclusions without
evaluating what the author
says or concludes.

5. Annotated Bibliography Assignment
• Each citation in the bibliography is accompanied
by an annotation, which may be descriptive
and/or informative in nature
• Annotations should be 2 to 3 sentences and focus
on the following:
– Summary of main argument/data
– How source fits into your paper
– How source compares to other information you have
gathered.

6. How to…
• Choose your sources
– Choose your sources.
Locate records to materials
that may apply to your
topic.
• Review the items
– Choose those that provide
a wide variety of
perspectives on your topic.
Article abstracts are helpful
in this process.
• Write the citation and
annotation
– The complete citation
should always come first
and the annotation
follows.

7. Writing your Synthesis Paragraph
• Summarize your articles
– Reporting the ideas of others,
using your own words;
representing the main points of an
article/source
– Always identifies the original
source (citation and/or attribution)
– Always shorter than the original,
but length varies according to
assignment/context
– Does not use quotes
• Based on a reading and summary
of related articles/texts, synthesis
is your observation(s) of all the
related texts, usually with a
specific focus
– Synthesis often appears as the
topic sentence in a longer paper,
overviewing the specific content of
a paragraph.
• The collected sources may be
cited in a synthesis: (Moore
2007; Randolph 2003; Sarin 2005)

8. Synthesis Strategies
• Compare:
– What do all or most of the sources say that is similar?
– What is the point of agreement?
• Contrast
– What does one source add to the conversation that is
unique?
– Do any of the sources disagree? What is the point of
stasis/difference?

9. Content
• This paragraph will be a
combination of
summary sentences and
synthesis sentences
• Format
– Intro sentence
• Statement 1
– Summary/Synthesis
– Summary/Synthesis
• Statement 2
– Summary/Synthesis
– Summary/Synthesis
• Etc…
– Concluding sentence