INLS843 Seminar in Public Libraries

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Annotated Bibliography

This is a fuller explanation about we will be doing for our final project, the annotated bibliography.

To start, what are we talking about? Googling the term gives us a good range of clues.

• Cornell University Library asks the question: WHAT IS AN ANNOTATED BIBLIOGRAPHY?
  • An annotated bibliography is a list of citations to books, articles, and documents. Each citation is followed by a brief (usually about 150 words) descriptive and evaluative paragraph, the annotation. The purpose of the annotation is to inform the reader of the relevance, accuracy, and quality of the sources cited.
• I think Cornell's 150 word characterization of an annotation is a tad long, but I wouldn't think an annotation should exceed that length.

An example of an annotated bibliography on information technology, for example, is Current Cites.

• If one uses Current Cites to create a bibliography on demand for the topic "libraries," one gets a pretty good dynamic product.
• However, for us, a topical arrangement (with an author name sort within the topic) would be a better model.

Other explanations and descriptions include:

• University of Minnesota's Crookston Library
• Purdue University's Online Writing Lab
• LEO: Literacy Education Online at St. Cloud State University, Minnesota
• However, the model I would like us to follow is the one proffered by SUNY Albany.
  • Follow their five steps to create your annotated bibliographies, using the critical annotation model.

You will create a document that will be a useful tool for future generations of students who want to know more about public library topics. Your work will be published as a SILS Technical Paper, a resource that we plan to continually update by having subsequent INLS843 classes add more to it.

• Each of you will have chosen a topic of special interest, a topic you will be leading a discussion on. This is the topic you will use to create your annotated bibliography. We would expect at least 15-20 bibliographic entries per topic. If two of you all are sharing a topic, try to stretch yourselves to include at least 15 entries apiece. (You don't have to stop at 20, but do try to reach 20).
• They don't all have to be books or articles. You might well want to critically annotate some online resources.
• You might find the Internet Public Library's own annotated bibliographies a good jumping off point.
• The final project will be part of the process of SILS putting some useful tools and resources online.