Resilience Story Essay

Annotated Bibliography

After you’ve evaluated a source and determined that you will find it useful for your project, write an annotation of the source. An annotation refines the information you put together in the source evaluation and reframes it by both summarizing the source and articulating how you are using it for your own argumentative purposes. GUIDING QUESTIONS FOR WRITING ANNOTATIONS An annotation is the basic entry in an annotated bibliography.

1) Who are the author and publisher? What authority does the author have on this topic, and what is the publisher’s purpose in publishing this information?

2) What is the genre of the source? How does the genre influence how you will use the source and the information it gives you?

3) What kinds of evidence does the source draw on? What genres of sources does it use? 4) When was the source published? Is this information current, a useful historical artifact, or

simply out-of-date? 5) How is the source relevant to your project, and does it help to illustrate the importance

and current urgency of your topic or your central problem?

BENEFITS OF WRITING EVALUATIONS AND ANNOTATIONS

● Make it a practice to write about sources that seem potentially useful, starting with writing out your evaluation of the source as well as an annotation that summarizes the main ideas or arguments and makes note of key pieces of evidence.

● While writing about your sources before you need to use them in a draft may seem like extra work, and you may be tempted to skimp on or even skip this writing—don’t. Preliminary writing about your sources prepares you to use them in some important ways.

● Summarizing a source helps you understand and synthesize the information in that source, which is especially important when working with complex scholarly arguments. After all, successfully paraphrasing a source or introducing and analyzing a quotation requires a solid understanding of the original source.

● Writing down your evaluations helps you achieve new insights about the credibility and relevance of the source that will help you use it more thoughtfully and purposefully in your composition.

● Well-crafted annotations and evaluations create a record of what each source argued, key evidence used, and your initial assessment of the source’s level of credibility and relevance to your project. Tracking this kind of information so that you can refer back to it days or weeks after you have read a source helps you remember the defining characteristics of sources and the differences between them, and will save you time in the long run.

● Some of the sentences you draft for your annotations and evaluations will end up in your compositions as part of your analysis.

● Revisit and revise your annotations and evaluations throughout the quarter to keep them up to date as your understanding of your sources and their role in your research and writing evolves. You will find that writing about your sources before you use them is actually one of the most important steps in your research process.

SAMPLE ANNOTATION Here’s a sample annotation:

Schmitz, Zachary. “The Impact of Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission on National Elections in the U.S.” LOGOS: A Journal of Undergraduate Research, vol. 6, Fall 2013, pp. 33–62. EBSCOhost, search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=a9h&AN=95062348&site=ehost-live&scope= site. Web. 8 Apr. 2019. [Note: missing hanging indent] The paper, published in LOGOS: A Journal of Undergraduate Research at Missouri State University, analyzes campaign finance data from 2006 to 2012 to see if the case actually created the outcomes its opponents were worried about. Schmitz mentions both arguments for and against the decision. After this, the data from the piece is presented in numerous tables that monitor campaign spending since the supreme court decision. According to the data, it is unlikely that the changes in spending were a direct result of the decision. The only major difference in spending is noticed in independent campaign spending. An important take away from the article is what it says about Super PACS. Super PACS are “independent-expenditure-only committees” (53) that may “raise unlimited sums of money from corporations, unions, associations and individuals” (53). Of all the areas that experienced high increases in spending, these experienced the most growth with conservatives leading the way with a 1000% increase from 2010 to 2012. He states that these will definitely play a huge role in elections in the years to come.