English 101

 Annotated Bibliography

In order to do your rhetorical analysis of an issue, you must have collected and looked carefully at a number of sources. You need to have chosen sources that will enable you to have an interesting analysis and which demonstrate the different perspectives and "voices" on the issue you are investigating. To facilitate that process and for me to check that you have collected sources, narrowed your topic, and understand bibliographical citations I am collecting an "Annotated Bibliography."

"Annotated" means you will provide a contextual paragraph (at least) for every source you use in the bibliography. Your paragraphs should talk about the source in terms of your upcoming rhetorical analysis. You will want to summarize the source as far as you will be using it as part of your analysis. Make these annotations as useful as possible for you to cut down on the work you will be doing on the actual papers. Summarize the materials in your own words.

Here are the guidelines for the assignment:

• Collect a number of sources and look through them. Which ones seem most "usable" for your paper? Evaluate sources for how they represent the perspectives on your issues. Choose sources that are not too complex for you to summarize in your own language. But, choose sources that are argumentative. Do not choose sources that are just descriptive or that report "facts". Choose sources that use rhetorical strategies (or you will be unable to make an effective rhetorical analysis for your essay).
• Pick 5 or so of those sources (that means at least 5 sources are required in the bibliography).
• Write contextual paragraphs for the sources identifying basic summaries, what the source's purpose is, if author or publication credentials are important, currency of the source, and rhetorical strategies employed. Who is the audience? Is the source effective? How does it fit into the big picture of your issue?
• Put the information in bibliographical format--MLA style guidelines (examples of source format available on-line at http://www.u.arizona.edu/~danika/source.html).
• Your bibliography must be in proper format, must have useful annotations (2 or 3 sentences are not very useful), must have the required number of sources, and must be on an issue (not a broad topic and not several topics).

I will provide a sample of an annotated bibliography in class and on-line.

Here is how you summarized class sessions on annotated bibliography.

The Annotated Bibliography is due in class on October 17, 1997.