Project Three: Annotated Bibliography
THE LOGISTICS
THE ASSIGNMENT
You will prepare an annotated bibliography, which is a list of potential sources and commentary on those
sources for your final paper. This bibliography is an exercise of research. This research will allow you to
formulate a position that you will argue on a specific topic in your final paper. Your topic for your final
paper must be an in depth researched argument that serves as a culmination of the work you have done
throughout the semester. You must incorporate 5 sources in your annotated bibliography, and I expect
three of these sources to be academic in nature, meaning that I should be able to find them in the LSU
library or in an LSU library database. Your other two sources can be from credible news outlets, such as
The New York Times, The Guardian, or The Wall Street Journal. Not all of your sources will have the
same opinion about your specific topic. Therefore, it is your job is to reveal multiple perspectives on the
topic that you choose and to formulate your own opinion about the topic after doing research.
THE CONTENT EXPECTATIONS
At the minimum, the annotated bibliography should include:
• A brief (200 word) exploration of what kind of argument you wish to make in your final paper.
Please be as detailed as possible.
• A full and correct bibliography entry for each source in MLA style. You will need to include 5
sources in this assignment, so you will have 5 bibliographic entries. These entries must be
alphabetized by the last name of the author or, where there is no author to list, by title.
• An annotation that follows each bibliography entry. This annotation must include one or two
sentences that summarize the article’s content and/or main argument. It must also include two
sentences that explain how you could potentially use this information to form a larger argument
and how the article relates to the other sources you have chosen.
• The body of this assignment (meaning the annotations that you give for each source, not the
citations) should be a total of 500 words. This means that each of your annotations will be
around 100 words. Please note that the word count does not include the bibliographic citation
of the source.
THE MECHANICS
This paper should be formatted according to MLA standards (which includes double spacing, 12-point
font, Times New Roman, and the appropriate header).
THE CREATIVITY CLAUSE
I encourage you to use creativity in this assignment. This creativity can be conveyed on the level on of the
sentence, the way you express your ideas through the format of your analysis, or your choice of text itself.
While I am giving you free creative reign for this assignment, I expect you to be able to justify your
creative choices. I encourage you to come talk to me if you are unsure of the ways in which your creativity
will be received.
THE WHY ARE WE DOING THIS?
We are doing this assignment so that you develop research skills and learn to evaluate secondary sources
that you can include in future projects. By reading and choosing what is actually important in a source,
you will learn how various sources can be put into conversation with each other. For the annotated
bibliography, you are simply compiling various claims by different authors in order to analyze a larger
topic.
Category of Evaluation Points Comments
Evaluations: All of the sources
are credible and can be
justified for being included
within the annotated
bibliography.
Annotation: Each annotation
clearly summarizes the item’s
contents and makes it clear
how that item fits into the
topic as outlined in the
introduction. Annotations also
clearly indicate how each
source relates with the others
in the bibliography.
Clarity: The author has
defined words that the
audience would not
understand.
Conventions: Each citation is
correctly formatted in MLA
style. The writing is free of
errors in grammar and
spelling.
Style: The writing is free of
awkward, wordy, and
confusing phrasing and so it is
easy to read.
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