Annotated Bibliography for Western Civilization

Step One:  Pick a topic for your annotated bibliography.  See your course syllabus for the due date.

Step Two:  Submit a Five Item annotated bibliography.  See your course syllabus for the due date.
        Follow the model provided in the 5 Item Bibliography.
        It should include:

a.  one encyclopedic entry (do not use a Web encyclopedia)
b.  two book entries
c.  two scholarly journal article  (most likely found in a data base)

Step Three:  Submit a Ten Item annotated bibliography.  Use the 5 Item Bibliography as your base and add five more entries.
        See your course syllabus for the due date.

Your ten item annotated bibliography should be organized as follows:

a.  one encyclopedic entry (do not use a Web encyclopedia)
b.  two book entries
c.  two scholarly journal article  (most likely found in a data base)
d.  one popular magazines (may be found in library or in a data base)
e.  one original source (may be found in library or in a data base)
f.  three Web sources (as it says, use the Web.)

Please set up your annotated bibliography in a form shown below.  Note that I have not given an example for each type of bibliographic entry.

Annotation means a comment about the bibliographic entry.  It is not a review or complete summary of what you read.  The annotation should not be longer than three  to five sentences.

Your annotation should: 
    a)  include a one sentence  summary or evaluation of the article cited;
    b)  include some information on the author of the article or book   Who is he?  What are his credentials?
    c)  include the library where you did your research, when you did the research, and the call numbers of the book cited;
    d)  for Web citations, please tell me something about the organization whose Web pages you are using.  Is it a college or university?  A political interest group?  A newspaper or magazine?

#############

Your Name
Your Course and Section
Date

Annotated Bibliography
Title of Your Research Topic

Encyclopedia

Encyclopedia Americana,  International Edition (1998), s.v. "Bibliography."

Verner C. Clapp of the Council on Library Resources wrote this introductory article on bibliographies.  It is not particularly useful for our purposes since it goes well beyond the question of how to do a bibliography.  From a broader perspective, it informs us that we are merely doing a "source list"  when we compile a ten item bibliography.

Books

The Chicago Manual of Style:  The Essential Guide for Writers, Editors, and Publishers,
       15th Ed.  Chicago:  University of Chicago Press, 2003.

This is a 956 page tome that tells you more than the ordinary person would ever want to know about formatting a book for publication.  The chapters on documentation explain how do do bibliographies.  It seems to me that Web citations are still not fully integrated even in this 2003 edition.  One would expect that Turabian will soon follow with an updated version of her briefer book.

Turabian, Kate L. A Manual for Writers of Term Papers, Theses, and Dissertations, 6th Ed.
        Chicago:  University of Chicago Press, 1996.

Turabian’s Manual, 6th ed., is based on the fourteenth edition of the Chicago Manual of Style (1993).  Turabian is an abbreviated condensation of the more comprehensive University of Chicago Manual.   Turabian is available at the UCC library, at most town libraries, and can be bought at most bookstores.  Its reference number in the UCC Library is:   REF 808.02 Tu84m6.

Scholarly Journals

I shall not give any particular entries for this category.  But I will cite a few scholarly journals, so that you get the idea.

Administrative Science Quarterly
American Political Science Review
American Historical Review
Business Ethics Quarterly
Current History
Economic History Review
European History Quarterly
Foreign Affairs
Foreign Policy
History Today
Isis
Mind
Political Science Quarterly
Public Administration Review
Public Affairs Quarterly

Popular Magazines

I shall not give any particular entries for this category.  But I will cite a few popular journals, so that you get the idea.

Time Magazine
Newsweek
U.S. News and World Report
The New Yorker
Atlantic Monthly
Harpers
The Economist
National Geographic

Original Source

Bissett, Susan and Lisa Bruckman.  "Union County College Libraries Citation Guide:
        Documenting Sources Using Turabian."  September 2000.

This is a pamphlet prepared by two UCC librarians and available at the UCC Library.  This pamphlet was specifically produced for my courses and thus may qualify as an original source.  It really belongs in the category of "pamphlet."

A book by Aristotle is an original source on Aristotle.

A newspaper article written during the U.S. Civil War is an original source on that time period.

Original sources are also called primary sources.

Web Resources

Ohio State University Libraries. "Guides to the OSU Libraries:  Turabian Citation Guide."
     Available online from:  http://www.lib.ohio-state.edu/guides/turabiangd.html.
     Last Update:  10/22/03, The Library Instruction Office.  [Accessed on October 28, 2003.]

This Web site provides additional examples of how to do bibliography in the Turabian format.

University of Southern Mississippi.  USM Libraries.  "Turabian Style Guide." Available
     online from: http://www.lib.usm.edu/~instruct/guides/turabian.html.  Last
     modified:  January 19, 2003.  [Accessed on October 28, 2003.]

Another Web site providing examples of how to do a bibliography in the Turabian format.

Damerow, Harold E., Prof. of Government and History, Union County College
     "Information Literacy."  Available online from:
     http://faculty.ucc.edu/egh-damerow/info_literacy.htm.  [Accessed on October 28,
     2003.}

You are looking at one of the pages meant to help you complete  the annotated bibliography required in some of my courses.

* * * 

Your Annotated Bibliography Should:

1.  Categorize as shown above.

2.  Single space bibliographic entries.

3.  Indent second and following lines of bibliographic entries.

4.  Leave a line space between bibliographic entry and annotative remarks.

5.  Indent annotation (make margins five spaces smaller on both margins).  

6.  Singe space annotations.

7.  Leave line space after annotative remarks.

8.  Placed name of article in quotation " " marks.

 9.  Underline or italicize the names of books and names of magazines.

10.  For scholarly journals, give the Volume #, Issue #, Month and Year of Publication, and pages of article in journal.  Follow this example: 
        The American Journal of International Law.  Vol. 39, No.3 (July 1945): 406-425.

11.  For popular magazines and newspapers, give date that the issue appeared for public sale. (You don't have to cite volume and issue numbers)

12.  You do not number bibliographic entries when you use the Turabian format.

13.  Books require place of publication, publisher, and year of publication.  For example:  Upper Saddle River, N.J.:  Prentice-Hall, Inc., 2004.

14.  Be aware that Bibliographies and Footnotes are two different things.  Footnotes have a slightly different format than do Bibliographies.

 

If you have not followed the rules above, you have committed one of the common errors.

 

This Web page and others linked to it provide an introduction on how to do research, footnotes, and bibliographies.  These pages are meant only for my students.

This page was visited times so far.

 

Dr. Harold Damerow
Professor of Government and History
Union County College
Cranford, NJ
Updated November 30, 2006
Updated November 10. 2009