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AIS 101 - Introduction to American Indian Studies

American Indian Studies

Your Annotated Bibliography Assignment

For you AIS Annotated Bibliography Assignment (Blalock) you are asked to provide a formatted citation for your reference along with a 100-300 word annotation and any quotes (quotes do not count in the total word count) that are interesting that you want to save. Include a link to the reference. Remember to:

  1. Use the summarize, assess, reflect method (see Purdue OWL (Links to an external site.) for guidance on annotated bibliographies) to understand how the source fits into your understanding of the topic.
  2. Cite resources using the Chicago Manual of Style (Links to an external site.). Purdue OWL has a helpful guide (Links to an external site.) that can help you turn information about your resource into citations. 
  3. Except for direct quotes which you want to note for later reference for the project (which don’t count towards the total), spend no more than 100-300 words on each reference.

Annotated Bibliography video

What is An Annotated Bibliography?

An annotated bibliography is a list of sources (books, articles, websites, etc.) with short paragraph about each source. An annotated bibliography is sometimes a useful step before drafting a research paper, or it can stand alone as an overview of the research available on a topic.

Each source in the annotated bibliography has a citation - the information a reader needs to find the original source, in a consistent format to make that easier. These consistent formats are called citation styles.  The most common citation styles are MLA (Modern Language Association) for humanities, and APA (American Psychological Association) for social sciences.

Annotations are about 4 to 6 sentences long (roughly 150 words), and address:

  •     Main focus or purpose of the work
  •     Usefulness or relevance to your research topic 
  •     Special features of the work that were unique or helpful
  •     Background and credibility of the author
  •     Conclusions or observations reached by the author
  •     Conclusions or observations reached by you


Annotations versus Abstracts

Many scholarly articles start with an abstract, which is the author's summary of the article to help you decide whether you should read the entire article.  This abstract is not the same thing as an annotation.  The annotation needs to be in your own words, to explain the relevance of the source to your particular assignment or research question.

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