By: Chelsea Tamborski
When you begin writing an article, it’s important to gather any pertinent information in a way that’ll be easily accessible when you finally start writing. Compiling information during the research process can help you immensely in providing informative facts and conclusions within your paper. One of the best ways to ensure that all your research isn’t lost in the shuffle of papers, books, or websites is by creating an annotated bibliography. An annotated bibliography provides clear-cut layouts of what research you’ve gathered, and why it’s useful to you and your paper. You should include a list of useful resources and a description of the article and the author. This information allows you to best decide how and where it’ll be most useful in your article. Creating a bibliography is fairly simple, if not a little time consuming, but incredibly worth the end result of a more in-depth and organized paper.
Searching for Resources
As you’re compiling relevant resources, you may find yourself with an abundance of articles, books, or documents that you may not even use. Don’t worry about that right now. The important part is that you have resources to give yourself some background on the topic.
Giving the Resources a Critical Eye
Now comes the more difficult part. Once you have everything you need, you can now sort through the pile and look into every layer of the source. You want to know what the article is actually saying. What separates it from other articles of a similar style? Does the author believe what he or she is writing? Is the article clear, and does it appropriately fit with your own?
Creating the Annotation
This step is where all that previously collected information finally comes into play. The annotation is very similar to an abstract, but it has more depth, and includes a variety of other useful data. By stating the central theme of the article, you can then continue to provide information about the author, including his authority on the subject. The next few sentences can include mentions of the intended audience and a comparative statement between this article and another you cited. Finally, it’s vital to include how this article can shed light on your topic and may even provide different perspectives that counter your thesis.
Style
You usually created an annotated bibliography when working with APA format, but this is always per the instructor’s specific instructions, and in some cases another style may be used.
Example
By: Lindsay Biondy
Wallen, Jeffrey. “Falling Under an Evil Influence.” Promoting and Producing Evil. 67-93.
Amsterdam, Netherlands: Rodopi, 2010. MLA International Bibliography. Web. 13 Oct.
This chapter attempts to use examples from literature to change the way one regards evil. It argues that one shouldn’t be focused on how to eliminate evil, but rather on how to understand the effects it has on the human condition, stating that it disturbs not only the individual, but the “human self.” Furthermore, the chapter examines how the idea of evil can be used to investigate the boundaries of humanity, as well as one’s consciousness, free will, and choice. To support this claim, Wallen looks to literary sources such as Bram Stoker’s Dracula, Guy de Maupassant’s Le Horla, H. G. Wells’ The Island of Dr. Moreau, and, of course, Robert Louis Stevenson’s Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. For my needs, I will be focusing specifically on his passages relating to Stevenson’s work.
The chapter is broken down into four parts: Moral Evil, The Spread of Evil, The Beast Folk, and Eliminating Evil. Wallen differentiates moral evil—evil that occurs because of the decisions people make, and natural evil—evil that expresses man as a mere biological being. At what point are we able to willingly slip in and out of our animalistic nature, and at what point do we become animals irrevocably? What are the boundaries between human and animal? Wallen also debates whether or not evil is grounded in the properties of the mind (human consciousness) or in the analysis of the brain. Evil interrupts our ability to make rational and lawful choices, opting instead for the pleasurable and instinctual. The idea of a contagious evil is also thoroughly explored: evil in a particular being can have adverse effects on the people it encounters. This also raises the question: how do you tell the human from the non-human? If it walks like a human and talks like a human, but doesn’t feel human, what does that mean?
I will use this article to support the part of my thesis that states that evil is a tangible thing, and that there are different levels of evil. Specifically, the kind that is present in all of us and can be controlled, and the kind that is inhuman, deranged, and dangerous. With regards to Jekyll and Hyde, this article will help me determine at what point evil turns from controlled to controlling.
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Hello Chelsea.
– Your Intro paragraph is action-packed; it is super-informative, easy to follow and understand, and well-organized. You clearly define what an annotated bibliography is, and you explain why it is important.
– Under your “Critical Eye” section, I think you might want to clarify what you mean by “…does it appropriately fit with your own?” I assume that you mean to ask the reader to consider whether they agree with the article’s stance/perspective…but it didn’t seem like a full thought to me.
– You use a handful of contractions in this post. They do not detract from your intention, but contractions are not “academic”. Since this is an academic piece, I would encourage you to use full/proper terms instead of contractions.
– Lindsay’s example ROCKS! You chose an EXCELLENT, clear example that illustrates each of your points above. For someone who does not know what an annotated bibliography is, you gave them a terrific foundation to help them create a stellar set of entries of their own.
– Under your “Style” section, I think you intended to use “create” instead of “created”, as “create” would match the tense of the rest of that section and your whole post.
– It might be a neat bonus to add a short section about how you would take your annotated bibliography a step further and apply it to writing the actual research paper. It is not necessary, as this post is about creating the bib, and not creating the paper. However, for those who might be seeking guidance in taking this step of application, a short explanation or some direction would be very appreciated.
Very nice work!