Creating your Annotated Bibliography

An annotated bibliography consists of 2 parts:

  • the bibliography: a list of citations to books, articles, and other documents
  • the annotation (for each document in the bibliography): a brief, descriptive and evaluative paragraph
To create the bibliography, use one of our online citation guides (we also have guides in print at the library, in our Writing & Research Guides section):

  • APA
  • BibMe - "an online citation generator service" where you can also create your annotation.
The library journal databases will cite the articles for you.

To create an annotation, you may include:

  • description or summary of the text
  • author's authority/background
  • intended audience
  • why you included this work (relevance)
  • conclusions or observations
It is different than an abstract as it is more than just a description or summary; there is some critical analysis involved. For this assignment, your annotation should be about 1/2 page to a page in length.

See How to Prepare an Annotated Bibliography for more information. Here is a sample from the Purdue Writing Lab.