How to help students write an Annotated Bibliography?

For every college student, it is important to remember that even a very well-written dissertation or research paper would seem nothing if it does not contain a good annotated bibliography. At times, bibliography becomes a part of your assignment, and at times, it also comes as a separate assignment to you. So before you begin writing with any kind of assignment, make sure that you have a clear idea of what annotated bibliography is and how it needs to be framed and constructed in your academic paper.

Most of you might think annotation is a concept of explaining a brief summary of a book, an article or any other kind of publication. However, in reality, it’s different. Instead of a summary, it comes out as a concept where you present enough information and facts for the reader to be able to decide whether he or she wishes to read the complete dissertation or not. At times, annotations can be descriptive, but this doesn’t mean that they are also abstract in nature. It needs to be critical in every aspect, including some unique and distinctive features about your presented work.

So, defining an annotated bibliography here, which simply means putting up a list of sources for the reader. You can also think of it as a reference list, which includes all the necessary sources of your work and content. However, the only difference between a simple bibliography and an annotated one is that under the annotated section, each of your references gets followed by a paragraph-long annotation.

Writing an annotated bibliography for your academic paper is not an easy task. So, here we have mentioned a few steps that can help you combine a good one-

Select relevant sources

Whenever you begin writing with your paper, make sure that the first thing you do is find the best sources for your research. The quality of your paper majorly depends on the sources you choose for it, so it needs to be collected accordingly. To find the best sources, all you need to do is define the boundaries and range of your research that can help you decide better on your sources. Pre-defined boundaries on your research context is the only thing that can help you select sources for your content.

Examine the value of your sources

Once the list of sources is finalized for your paper, the next thing that you need to do is assess the importance of those sources. Try to build a connection between the words you choose with the sources you have selected for your paper. If the bibliography needs to be presented as a part of your academic assignment, then you must figure out whether or not you are going to use that source for your paper. Figure out the value and contribution of the source to your research paper.

Evaluate the background information of the author

As you already know now that the usefulness of your bibliography majorly depends on the quality of the sources you choose for writing. In order to assess the quality of those sources, it is important that you examine and evaluate the credentials of the author along with his/her experience in the field. Many students tend to miss out this factor in their academic paper. However, you must remember that everything available on the internet might not be true, its a vast space and anybody can put up any kind of information on it, whether it’s true or fake. So it’s your responsibility to make sure that the sources you choose are relevant to your content.

Summarize the point of your source

While writing the mentioned sources in your bibliography, you must be capable enough to give a quick view of the topic. For an annotated bibliography, you need to understand the primary argument you make or the point of source mentioned in your content. Remember that an annotation means briefly explaining the main argument of your source. So if you are annotating any academic source, make sure that you identify its hypothesis, research question or the thesis. Here, you must also identify the major methods that are involved in the investigation process.

Write the bibliography

Now that you have completed all the other steps summarize all the sources that you are using in your project. Be careful while creating a bibliography for your research paper. There might be many different types of annotated bibliography in academics, but you must choose the one assigned by your teacher.

So, while writing a bibliography, make sure that you follow these above-mentioned steps for writing. Apart from this, if you face any kind of difficulties with your research or academic paper, feel free to contact our online academic writing services for professional guidance and high-quality content.