What is an “Annotated Bibliography”?

The first question should be: “What does ‘annotated’ or ‘annotation’ mean?” Annotation simply means to evaluate and summarize something. For example, when you are listening to a professor lecture you should be taking notes about what s/he is saying. Obviously, you do not jot down every single word s/he says; instead, you paraphrase and write down the “gist” of the content. This is annotating.

The second question should be: “What is a ‘bibliography’?” A bibliography (also called a “Reference“ or “Works Cited” section) is the part of a manuscript that lists all of the sources of information were used in writing the manuscript. Thus, information and ideas from books, chapters, articles, media, or people that were used in writing a manuscript are referenced (listed) in the bibliography. Any idea that is not uniquely yours, whether paraphrased or quoted, must be cited in your manuscript and then referenced in the bibliography section.

Thus, an “annotated bibliography” is a list of sources related to a topic that includes an annotation of each source. Annotated bibliographies are useful for many reasons, but used mostly to organize, summarize and evaluate information about a specific topic, argument, or hypothesis. That is, annotated bibliographies lists references to sources and summaries of those sources, from which you may use to back up an argument or form a hypothesis for some topic. Annotated bibliographies are not lists of references and summaries to random sources; they are lists of references and summaries of sources relevant to a specific topic.

Annotated bibliographies always include a summary of the references; that is, what was found in the source, what was done if it was an empirical article, what points were made by the authors, etc. Basically, if someone were to ask you to describe the source in your bibliography, what would you say?

Once a summary has been provided, you should critically think about the source and evaluate its content and usefulness to your hypothesis. Is the source reliable or unreliable and why? Was the author biased in his/her writing and conclusions? Did the author justify his/her positions and back up hypotheses? Basically, should you believe the information provided in the source?

Finally, annotated bibliographies should “fit” the information obtained from each source into your own research and hypothesis about the topic. Does this source help or hurt your hypothesis, and should your hypothesis be modified because of this source, and why?

The format of an annotated bibliography is straightforward: (1) Include the relevant publication information of each source you are using (see APA 5^th Edition for reference formats), and (2) follow each reference with an annotation. The annotation may include the three points listed above (i.e., summary, critical analysis, and “fitting in”), but should definitely include a summary at the least. The length of the annotation varies depending on (a) the purpose of the annotated bibliography, and (b) how detailed you want to be.

Note: When writing annotations you should still cite ideas that are not your own. If you paraphrase a point made in the source being referenced, or if you quote part of the source you should list the page number[s] from where it came, so people reading your annotated bibliography know where the information in your annotation came from.

Here is an example of a reference followed by an annotation looks like. Note that in an actual annotated bibliography you would include multiple sources and annotations.

Folk, C. L., Remington, R. W., & Johnston, J. C. (1992). Involuntary covert orienting is contingent on attentional control settings. 

        Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception & Performance, 18(4), 1030-1044.

The authors examined whether salient by irrelevant visual stimuli capture attention in a bottom-up, stimulus-driven manner; or whether the capture of attention by salient visual stimuli is contingent on current top-down expectations. The authors presented salient visual stimuli prior to the appearance of a target display, in which the subjects were to locate a specific visual target. If the salient visual stimulus was relevant to the item being searched for, it involuntarily captured the subject’s attention; but if it was irrelevant it did not. The procedures were well planned and the effects quite large, and being published in a reputable journal like this, it is a highly valuable. In addition, this single article sparked a number of follow-up studies that have assessed whether the involuntary processing of perceptual salience is bottom up, or top-down. The do results suggest that salient visual stimuli do not capture attention unless we have some intent to shift attention toward those items. However, it could be that top-down expectations mediate the capture of attention and processing visual salience is bottom up, but cannot be measured behaviorally.