Annotated bibliographies
An annotated bibliography gives you a chance to evaluate the quality and reliability of an academic source. It involves summarising the source and reflecting on its suitability for your research task.
You may be asked to produce an annotated bibliography as a standalone task or as preparation for a bigger piece of writing, like an essay. Why? Because it’s a great way to show that you are using quality sources, you understand the concepts and how they fit into your field. This page gives you the format and structure of an annotated bibliography so you can approach it with confidence.
What is an annotated bibliography?
An annotated bibliography is a short summary of an article, book or book chapter that you have read. They are often done for peer-reviewed journal articles. There are two kinds of annotated bibliographies:
- Descriptive annotation: summarises the main points of an article in no more than a single paragraph.
- Analytical annotation: summarises the main points of an article in no more than a single paragraph and includes a line or two of critique about the article.
A critique is a balanced evaluative appraisal about the positive and negative points about the article, i.e., it is not necessarily negative.
A formal part of an annotated bibliography is a full citation of the article you have read. This precedes any descriptive or analytical annotation. An annotated bibliography entry is therefore a combination of the two elements, i.e., the bibliographic information of a specific source and a paragraph summarising and, in the case of an analytical annotation, evaluating the content of the source.
A series of annotated bibliography entries
You may be asked to write multiple entries in an annotated bibliography task. For example, you may be asked to produce 6-10 annotated bibliography entries on hand sanitation procedures in nursing. This task helps you get a sense of the research literature within a narrow field of study.
Annotated bibliography entries are written to:
- review the literature of a particular subject
- demonstrate how effectively and widely you have read
- highlight sources that may be of interest to other readers and researchers
- explore and organise sources for further research (e.g., in preparation for an essay or a literature review).
When set as an assignment, an annotated bibliography task helps you to become more familiar with material published on a particular topic. This enables you to become aware of a specific field of research. This is useful for many reasons, not least of which is preparation for higher degree studies later. When writing annotated bibliographies you are beginning to review literature.
A five-part structure
Annotated bibliography tasks that require a structured approach are generally asking you to reflect these five parts in your annotation:
- A full citation of the source (using the referencing style relevant to your course, e.g., APA, Chicago)
- A general statement about the author’s purpose for writing the source
- A short summary of the content
- An evaluation of the content
- Reflection on the usefulness of the source to your study
Normally only one or two sentences are adequate for each section.