Annotated Bibliography Instructions

For your annotated bibliography, you will develop a debatable research question on an issue in which you are personally invested, look up secondary sources on Galileo or GIL, and write commentaries that explain how an idea from each source raises a factor to consider in the debate. The number of sources you collect depends on the course grade you want. For the default "B" grade, you need three sources. For the "A" grade, you need four sources. And those sources need to be journal articles, book chapters, or long magazine articles. Each source must be of significant length (I would shoot for ten pages or more, but if you are in doubt, you can ask me). Also, one of your sources must come from a physical book that you check out of the library and bring to class.

Steps for Doing the Annotated Bibliography

• For each source, you will write a two-paragraph commentary.
• Before you write any commentaries, you will use Galileo or GIL to find potential sources (not the Internet), but you first need an idea to guide your source selection. Construct a research question that targets your personal interest in a controversial issue. The sources you choose should bring up different factors related to your research question.
• You'll know a source is worth writing a commentary on if it brings up an idea that your debaters need to think about. The connection does not have to be direct--you will not find answers to your question. You need to stay open to connections that are indirect and insightful. Then you use your own intelligence to explain how the author's idea is important to the debate.
• Each commentary will start with a citation of the source (MLA style) and then have exactly two equal-length paragraphs that total 200-300 words.
  
  1. The first paragraph should identify a point that the author makes related to your research question. As you do in ARRs, explain this idea as the author presents it.
  2. The second paragraph should explain how that idea can help the debaters consider your question from a different angle without actually answering it. In other words, what factor does this idea bring to a discussion of your question?
• Above your set of commentaries should be a 200-300 word introduction that includes and explains your research question. How did you arrive at it, why is it important, and what some of the interesting and surprising findings from your sources?

Not including citations, total word count for the "B" Annotated Bibliography is 800-1200 words.
Not including citations, total word count for the "A" Annotated Bibliography is 1000-1500 words.