Know anything about Annotated Bibliographies?

I had to write an annotated bibliography for my psychology course.

The best advice I can give is to look at existing annotated bibliographies out there. Did your teacher give an outline of what is needed to be included in your annotations?

I am not entirely sure if it would be the same format as ours but basically what we needed to do was critically appraise the source – such as say where it was from, the main gist of the study, any criticisms of methodology, and whether the study supports/links to other articles in the AB. If you can somehow adapt from that framework that is a good starting point.

Another point we were given was to write how we would use the source in an essay in reply to a question. Not entirely sure if that applies to you – but probably does so if you were given an overall question.

They’re not as bad as they seem. You just have to say, in addition to citing it as usual, how the book helped you. So it can be pretty simple stuff like “This book was about volcanos and spent much time talking about Pompeii in particular. I used it to get general facts about volcanos and also to help with my research about the Mt. Vesuvius eruption.”

Yeah, like @deni said—think of the notes as notes to yourself to remind you about the source and why you thought it was important. Imagine you coming back to this research six months later, and you’ve forgotten all the stuff you read. Write a note that tells your future self everything s/he needs to know in order to be up to speed in two seconds.

I think what @Ame_Evil said is more along the lines of what i have to do.
My teacher was really vague though
Instructions: “read at least 5 pieces of literary criticsm and create an annotated bibliography”
wow. shes helpful. lol

Go to www.easybib.com

my college teacher taught me that, and it made stuff ALOT easier. Just select what format you want, and input the data they ask. The site will then generate a perfectly formatted bibliography.

I’m surpised so few people still know about this site!

Hope that helps.

An annotated bibliography is a bibliography with an explanation of what the each work cited is about. In this way it helps the researcher discover whether the material can be of use to him if he is not familiar with the work listed.

It all depends on what the teacher wants. The professor I did most of my annotated bibliographies for wanted a bit of a critical evaluation of what I read. It was not so much a summary, but what was good and bad about the piece in question and what key pieces of information or general topics it provides. Focus on saying something about how the piece was good, bad, or useful and not on summarizing it. And keep it short. It should be a page max, unless you have instructions to the contrary, so really you should find the hardest part is not making it too long.

I would also advise asking the teacher what exactly she’s looking for, because expectations may differ. You can’t go wrong asking questions of the teacher, especially if you sound smart asking them by using what you’ve learned here to ask a more specific question.

For the love of god, don’t use some computer tool to generate this. The whole point is for it to be in your own words to tell you what you found in the reading. Even if you aren’t going to use this for research, it’s practice for doing so in the future.

The Owl is the go-to site for this stuff.