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Getting Started with Research at Shapiro Library

This guide discusses understanding information sources, formulating a topic and search phrase, where and how to search the library for information, how to evaluate sources, how to cite sources, and more.

Annotated Bibliography in MLA Style


What is an Annotated Bibliography?

An annotated bibliography is essentially a list of citations to books, articles, and other documents, e-resources--(websites for example), and media (film, music, television.)  Following the citation is a brief (usually about 150 words) descriptive and evaluative paragraph of the work.  These paragraphs are the annotation. The purpose of the annotation is to help you manage your research and also to inform your professor of the relevance, accuracy, and quality of the sources cited.

Example Annotated Bibliographies in MLA Style

Example of an MLA Style Book Citation with Annotation

Calhoon, Kenneth Scott. Fatherland: Novalis, Freud, and the discipline of Romance. Wayne State University Press, 1992.

This book analyzes the origins of German Romanticism and the works of Novalis. The author examines how Romanticism and psychoanalysis use the idea of a shared economy of longing and disappointment, and the role of mourning therein. Through a psychoanalytical approach, he argues that Romanticism challenges the primacy of reason within the Enlightenment by recovering repressed aspects of the social order.

Example of an MLA Style Journal Article Citation with Annotation

Van den Broek, Claire Y. “How the Panther Stole the Poem: The Search for Alterity in Rilke’s Dinggedichte.” Monatshefte 105.2 (2013): 225-246.

This article explores Rilke’s letters and diaries of the early Paris years to explore how they reflect Rilke’s pre-occupation with mankind’s ability to come to terms with the knowledge of their own mortality. Examining the influence of Rodin’s sculptural work and Lessing’s theory of art on Rilke’s poetry, she argues that Rilke attempted to produce a poetic process that models a liberation from the limitations of humanity through a surrender to alterity and an artistic elevation of the reader.

More Examples

Examples from the Purdue Online Writing Lab:
https://owl.purdue.edu/owl/general_writing/common_writing_assignments/annotated_bibliographies/annotated_bibliography_samples.html This link opens in a new window

Examples adapted from the Cornell University Library:
https://guides.library.cornell.edu/annotatedbibliography This link opens in a new window