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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.
Elements of an annotation
Example Annotated Bibliography Entry
Context: The annotation below is in preparation for a paper on representations of gender roles in LGBTQ children's literature.
View the article here. Note that the annotation does not just repeat or paraphrase the abstract!
Crawley, Stephen A. "Be Who You are: Exploring Representations of Transgender Children in Picturebooks." Journal of Children's Literature, vol. 43, no. 2, 2017, pp. 28-41. ProQuest, http://eznvcc.vccs.edu:2048/login?url=https://search.proquest.com/docview/1964430375?accountid=12902.
This peer-reviewed journal article offers a critical content analysis of nine children's picture books with transgender children as protagonists. The critical lens in this content analysis is queer theory. Crawley, a PhD candidate at the time of publication and now faculty at Oklahoma State, finds a troubling homogeneity among representations of trans children. Most of the nine protagonists are white, middle class, identify as female, and have supportive parents. For my research, the section on gender essentialism (pages 32-33) in these nine books will be most useful. Crawley observes that gender essentialism prevails not only in representations of parental roles, but also in representations of the trans children themselves. That is, among those identifying as female, most conform to gender-essentialist notions of girls' behavior (playing with dolls, favoring the color pink, etc.). Even in a set of realistic picture books attentive to gender and sexual minorities, young nonbinary and genderqueer children go unrepresented. Young children reading these books, too, will see little to challenge a binary understanding of gender. Crawley's findings are, however, specific to realistic fiction and autobiography--they exclude fantasy and science fiction. It would be interesting to find a similar study on those other genres.
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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Research & Learning Services
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