Art and Design Education

What is an annotation and a bibiography?

A bibliography is most often created to list the sources that were used in a research paper or presentation. Sometimes bibliographies are assigned as a stand-alone project so that a student will become familiar with works by a particular author or on a particular theme. Bibliographies might list a variety of source-types such as journal articles, books, websites, images, podcasts, etc.

An annotation is a summary or evaluation of a source that helps to establish its scope, relevance and/or usefulness. Annotations are written in paragraph form.

Therefore, an annotated bibliography will list sources with accompanying annotations. Preparing an annotated bibliography can help you learn about a topic, establish the relevance of sources to a topic, formulate a thesis argument, and keep track of the sources used during the research process. Professors often assign an annotated bibliography as one of the steps toward actualizing a research project. 

For more information on annotated bibliographies, see:

Purdue OWL--Annotated Bibliographies

In addition to the online examples of annotated bibliographies (see right), there are puplished annotated bibliographies. Here are a few examples from the Pratt Libraries' collection. It might help to take a look at these.

Click on the image or link to view the PrattCat record--this will help you determine a book's location & availability.