Personal Project Annotated Bibliography

For your personal project you need to create an annotated bibliography. An annotated

bibliography is an analytical list of sources you are consulting for your personal project.

An Annotated Bibliography consists of two parts:

1) A proper bibliographic entry in MLA, APA, or Chicago/Turabian styles.

2) A 4-6 sentence evaluation of the source.

Personal Project Bibliographic Entry:

Personal Project should be in an MLA format. Although you have been taught in 9th grade that

you should follow the format appropriate for the academic focus of the research project you are

conducting, for the purposes of uniformity, we ask that all Personal Projects be completed using

MLA.

Information you need to collect from a source in order to be prepared to create a

bibliography in the MLA format:

Website TItle of website Title of page or article you are using Author of page or article you are using Creator of website (person or organization) specific URL date accessed name of database

Journal author title of article page numbers of article title of journal volume and issue number of publication date of publication URL date of access name of database

Newspaper author title of article title of newspaper place of publication (city of newspaper) date of publication volume number URL date of access

Book author title and subtitle

editor or translator edition volume place published publisher date published page numbers of chapter/s consulted

Please use an automatic generator web resource like Easy Bib or Citation to create your

bibliography OR see the separate handout on how to create a bibliography and in-text or

footnote citations.

Evaluating a Source:

The goal of an annotated bibliography is to give a brief assessment of a source so that you can

identify its strengths and weaknesses in helping you address a research question. For an

annotated bibliography you want to write a sentence or two analyzing each of the following (you

don’t have to label them):

Origin

● is the author a journalist or a professor? or a professional in the field? ● is it primary or secondary? ● what type of source is it? (i.e., newspaper, book, journal article, website, photograph)

Purpose

● what does the source argue? what point is it trying to make?

Value

● in what ways does this source help you answer your question?

● why is this source valid and reliable (well-known author? well-respected author? expert

on the topic?)

Limitations

● in what ways is this source not helpful in answering your question?

● why is this source not particularly valid or reliable? (bias? inexperienced author? author

who is not an expert on the topic?

Example:

Inquiry Question: To what extent did life improve for African Americans after the Civil War?

Zinn, Howard. ""Slavery Without Submission, Emancipation Without Freedom"" A

People's History of the United States: 1492-2001. New ed. New York: Harper Perennial

Modern Classics, 2005. Print.

Howard Zinn, a renowned historian and social activist, wrote this book to tell

some major stories of history from the perspective of the underdog. A political science

professor at Howard University, Zinn (he’s deceased) argued in this chapter that

economic power and racial oppression worked together to keep African-Americans

enslaved prior to the Civil War and to help create systems of oppression after the end of

Reconstruction. This chapter is valuable to this investigation because he is a well-known

historian who provides excellent detail explaining the developments that both helped and

hurt African-Americans. The chapter also uses many well-known historians and primary

sources, making it well-researched. The chapter is limited because Zinn writes from a

socialist perspective, focusing on the ways in which African-Americans were oppressed

economically and blaming capitalism for many of the problems they faced.