Research Guides: EDST-308: Gender, Feminisms, and Education: Annotated Bibliographies

Why make an annotated bibliography?

Annotated bibliographies are paragraph-length descriptions of scholarly sources. The purpose of an annotated bibliography is to:

Guide readers by providing a list of sources on a specific subject
Briefly describe a source
Analyze the usefulness or significance of a source

An annotated bibliography is helpful for making sense of how sources relate to one another for incorporating into a literature review. Collections of annotated bibliographies have been published as books or articles.

Components of an annotated bibliography

The source's citation in an appropriate citation style
A description of the authority/background/credentials of the author of the source
A summary of the source's format
Overview of the source's central argument and/or findings
An evaluation of the source
An explanation of how the work informs your research

Example of an annotated bibliography entry

Source: Owens, T. C., Callier, D. M., Robinson, J. L., & Garner, P. R. (2017). Towards an interdisciplinary field of Black girlhood studies. Departures in Critical Qualitative Research, 6(3), 116-132.

Suggested Resources

OWL at Purdue Annotated Bibliographies
Purdue's OWL site provides sample annotated bibliographies using MLA and APA citations.
Annotated Bibliography Tutorial
This tutorial distinguishes annotated bibliographies from journal abstracts and provides a sample annotated bibliography with a citation in APA format. This tutorial was developed by Cornell University Library.
Annotated Bibliographies
This guide contains a useful infographic that describes all the components of an annotated bibliography. The guide was created by the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.