In the Time of the Butterflies/Sisson: Annotated Bibliography

The Annotated Bibliography – DUE by the end of class on Friday, March 18

Adapted from a handout created by the lovely Ms. Manners

For your Master Harold Research Project, you created and submitted formal Works Cited pages to credit the sources you used. Works Cited pages and bibliographies are the same thing; your teachers/professors will use these terms interchangeably throughout your experience in secondary and higher education. An annotated bibliography, however, goes beyond just properly citing the sources you have used—it also summarizes and evaluates their arguments.

Remember that you are expected to use at least FIVE sources for your research:

• Aim for 1 primary and 4 secondary sources
• Wikipedia can be cited as a source in your final Works Cited page, but it may not be one of your 5 sources for the annotated bibliography.
• Try to use a print source (a physical book that you can hold in your hands!) for one of your 4 secondary sources.

For each source you use, you must:

1. Summarize/paraphrase the information given—write a quick summary of what you have learned from the source. What is the point it is trying to make? What topics are covered?

2. Evaluate the information—is the source useful? Is it biased or objective? What is the goal of the source? [note: Just because a source has an argument does not make it unreliable. You can read a source with a clear agenda that still provides you with useful information, but, you must understand what that agenda is. Understanding the built-in bias of a source will help you assess how much you can trust the information given.]

Each annotation should be between 100 and 200 words.

On the next page (the box to the right) you will find a sample annotation, taken from Purdue University’s Online Writing Lab. I strongly recommend that you look at the website (the link is included in the Resources section of our LibGuide) for more information about annotated bibliographies and MLA citation in general.

The tricky thing about research is that you can’t rely on finding exactly what you need the first time you find a source. You may have to look at multiple texts before figuring out which ones will be most useful in answering your research question. If you are not using a source to answer your research question, you do not need to write an entry in your annotated bibliography for it.

Lamott, Anne. Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life. New York: Anchor Books, 1995. Print.

Lamott's book offers honest advice on the nature of a writing life, complete with its insecurities and failures. Taking a humorous approach to the realities of being a writer, the chapters in Lamott's book are wry and anecdotal and offer advice on everything from plot development to jealousy, from perfectionism to struggling with one's own internal critic. In the process, Lamott includes writing exercises designed to be both productive and fun.

Lamott offers sane advice for those struggling with the anxieties of writing, but her main project seems to be offering the reader a reality check regarding writing, publishing, and struggling with one's own imperfect humanity in the process. Rather than a practical handbook to producing and/or publishing, this text is indispensable because of its honest perspective, its down-to-earth humor, and its encouraging approach.