Research Paper Assignment

For this assignment, you must list five sources you’ve found in your research as they would appear on an MLA-style list of works cited at the end of a research paper, including listing them in alphabetical order.

The annotated part is that, in addition to listing each source as it would appear on a works cited list, you will give a brief description and evaluation of each source.

Your annotations must include the following three pieces of information:

1. The type of source (article in a magazine, short work from a website, etc.) and how you accessed it (found online, found using a database, etc.)

2. A summary of the information covered in that source

3. Evidence of the credibility of the source (author’s credentials, reputation of the source itself, etc.)

In other words, convince me it’s a high-quality source .Here are a couple examples using some research I did on meth addiction a few years back. You will need to do this for five sources:

Falkowski, Carol L. “Methamphetamine Across America: Misconceptions, Realities and Solutions.” Spectrum: Journal of State Government, vol. 77, no. 4, Fall 2004, pp. 30-32.

Academic Search Premier, www.ebscohost.com/academic/academic-search-premier.

1. This is a journal article found using a database.

2. It discusses the “rising tide” methamphetamine and argues that “sufficient financial resources and the multidisciplinary coordination” of agencies is needed to win the battle against meth.

3. Carol Falkowski is the Director of the Alcohol and Drug Abuse division of the Minnesota Health and Human Services.

“The Meth Epidemic.” Frontline, written by Carl Biker, PBS, 14 Feb. 2006, www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/meth/.

1. This is an episode of a television program found online.

2. It looks at the growing methamphetamine problem and shows how increases in the potency of the drug have correlated with increases in addiction and drug-related crimes.

3. Since 1983, the Frontline series has produced over 500 programs, winning multiple awards, including a Peabody Award and an Emmy Award.

How to do an Annotated Bibliography: The first step, of course, is to do the research and gather those sources. Hopefully, you’ve been making good progress toward this goal. The next step is to take each source and look through the PDF “A Writer’s Reference – MLA Chapter.”

Specifically, look at the “Directory of works cited models” on pp. 393-395 to determine which rules apply to that source, with the goal of creating a works cited entry for that source based on those rules. For example, the first source listed above is a journal article I found while searching the Academic Search Premier database on our library’s website.

Looking through the directory on pp. 393-395 in my book, I found this:

Notice that for each type of source (journal article, newspaper article, etc.) there’s a different page number for how it was accessed (print, web, database). Again, you need to determine what type of source it is and how you accessed it so that you can list it properly. For this source, a journal article found using a database, it tells me to turn to page 433.

Here’s what I find: Actually, both of the pages above are helpful. For example, on p. 432 it tells us that if there is no DOI number for the article, I provide a “shortened URL of database,” which I did: Falkowski, Carol L. “Methamphetamine Across America: Misconceptions, Realities and Solutions.” Spectrum: Journal of State Government, vol. 77, no. 4, Fall 2004, pp. 30-32. Academic Search Premier, www.ebscohost.com/academic/academic-search-premier.

Let’s try another one. My second source I gave as an example is an episode of a television show found online. How did I know it was a television show? I Googled it! Remember to research your research (I discovered that Frontline is actually an award-winning television show, which is helpful for determining that it’s a highquality source.) So I went to the directory on pp. 393-395 and found this: So I turned to that section of the book, read through the instructions and looked at the example, and came up with this: “The Meth Epidemic.” Frontline, written by Carl Biker, PBS, 14 Feb. 2006, www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/meth/.

That’s the way it works. You use A Writer’s Reference and follow the instructions. I’ve been teaching this every semester for years, and I do exactly what I’m instructing you to do here—I use the book. You’ll find this to be a fairly tedious and time-consuming process, but this is the work required for a properly documented research paper. Just remember that by doing a significant portion of this work now you will be saving yourself the headache of doing it in the final days of the semester.

When it comes time to put together your works cited list for the final paper, you can simply copy and paste the entries from your Annotated Bibliography—minus the annotations and with any corrections that I’ve pointed out in my feedback.

Lastly, take a look below at the works cited list for the sample paper in A Writer’s Reference. This is what you’re going for, though you will have to include annotations for the Annotated Bibliography. Note the following:

• the entries are alphabetized

• the entries are indented after the first line

• article titles are in quotation marks

• publication, website, and databse titles are in italics

• URLs are not underlined and do not have hyperlinks

• URLs that carry over from one line to the next are broken off at the nearest slash or hyphen