What to focus on when writing an annotated bibliography:
- Cite the source
- Explain why the source is — or is NOT — relevant to your research: specifically, how does it support your thesis statement or the core of your message to your audience
- Keep it brief: Three to five sentences is ideal
- One sentence summarizing the content/the author or authors' main points
- One sentence describing the research methodology
- For example, "The authors created a Student Perception Survey using a Stratified Random Sampling Technique to gather information from 300 undergraduate students in order to determine their study habits."
- Remaining sentences need to be your description of why you're using this source to support your own
- The majority of your sources and annotations should be for resources that are useful for your project, so be sure to focus on those
- If you have taken the time to read an entire scholarly, peer-reviewed journal article only to realize that it isn't really helpful for your purposes, your description should explain why it's not helpful for your purposes as well as the rationale for why you continued to read it
- For example, "Although this source isn't useful in terms of supporting my research, it was a great example of how to structure a Stratified Random Sampling Technique, which is the research methodology I am using for my project."
The most important component of the annotated bibliography is telling your audience your rationale for the sources you are using in your own words. Your audience can read the source for themselves, which is why you start each entry with the citation; what we want to know is why you're using a specific source.
