An annotated bibliography is a bibliography with notes (called an annotation) below each citation. In the annotation, you summarize the source in your own words and evaluate how useful it is for your project.
Example Annotated Bibliography Entry
Context: The annotations below are in preparation for a paper on the origins of changing family norms in the United States.
View the original paper here. Note that the annotation does not just repeat or paraphrase the abstract!
Waite, L. J., Goldscheider, F. K., & Witsberger, C. (1986). Nonfamily Living and the Erosion of Traditional Family Orientations among Young Adults. American Sociological Review, 51(4), 541–554. https://doi.org/10.2307/2095586
This peer-reviewed study asks how nonfamily living (living apart from parents) impacts young adult's values and life plans. The authors expected that people who live independently would develop nontraditional family orientations, and that the impact of nonfamily living would be greater among young women than among young men. Using data from the National Longitudinal Surveys of Young Women and Young Men, the authors compare young adults' attitudes before and after they move out of their parents' home. The results support the authors' hypothesis, including their prediction that the effects of nonfamily living would be stronger in young women than in young men. Compared to young women who lived with their parents, women who lived apart from their families expected to have smaller families, expected to join the workforce and were more accepting of working mothers, and developed nontraditional views on sex roles. Among young men, the results were as predicted but not statistically significant (p.545), suggesting that those results could in principle be due to random chance. The analysis and discussion focus almost entirely on young women. Given the findings of this study, the authors tentatively predict "larger shifts than we have already observed" in family life (p. 553). Published in 1986, and based on data from the 1960s and 1970s, this article suggests that the ongoing changes in family norms have roots as far back as the mid-twentieth century, and that changing attitudes among young women are an important component of those changes.
Adapted and used with permission from The Research & Learning Services Department, in Olin and Uris Libraries, part of the Cornell University Library, "How to prepare an annotated bibliography," http://guides.library.cornell.edu/content.php?pid=448160
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