Track for gathering and assessing sources

The purpose of this assignment is to keep your group on-track for gathering and assessing sources relevant to your myth. It will help your group ensure that you are relying on sources of a sufficient quality. By writing this bibliography, your group will be forced to critically think about the sources you’re choosing and why you are choosing them. This will help your group determine which sources are the best and most important for ‘busting’ your myth. Hopefully this assignment will result in better final presentations.

About Annotated Bibliographies

What is an annotated bibliography? What distinguishes an annotated bibliography from other types of references is that after citing each source, the writer provides a brief (usually about a 150 word paragraph) description and evaluation, the annotation. The annotation informs the reader of the relevance, accuracy, and quality of the sources.

Why write an annotated bibliography? An annotated bibliography can be useful for several reasons. One, it proves you have done valid research informing your group’s final evaluation of your myth. This will improve the quality of your presentation as you will not just be using whatever sources you happen to come across first. Instead, you will be critically evaluating the information provided by your sources and making judgments about what will be most helpful in your endeavor. Specifically, this assignment will ask you to think about the content of your sources, how they fit within the developmental literature on your topic, and how they are relevant to your particular myth. Of course, the ability to do this requires that you have read and thought about the sources you are using.

What is included in an annotated bibliography? Although there are a variety of types of annotated bibliographies, for this class a good annotated bibliography will contain the following elements:

Appropriate citation of the source using APA style (1 point)
Explanation of the main points/purpose of the work, specifically those most relevant to your myth (1.5 pts)
Evaluation of the quality or usefulness of the work as evidence related to your myth (2.5 pts)
Comparison or contrast of this source with related sources (e.g., class material or other cited sources in your list). Make some links! Consider opposing views or converging evidence, for example. (2.5 pts)
Your bibliography should contain 4 sources. Each entry will be worth 7.5 points as delineated above.

Keep in mind, however, that your final presentations will draw from more sources than you present here (and I would recommend doing a similar evaluation for each). This bibliography should be thought of as a starting point, which highlights the most important or foundational sources for your mythbusting.

Instructions

Choose your group’s 4 best sources. Use the 4 bullet points above to type up your bibliography. Turn in only ONE copy per group. Submissions should be written, double-spaced, in 12 pt font and written in APA style. Bibliographies will most likely average 3 pages in length, assuming each entry is a paragraph about 200 words long. Please follow general grammar and mechanical guidelines.

Tips

If there have been any important or significant changes to your group’s project idea since turning in your project ideas, please include a paragraph or so updating me on the direction you plan on going. This will help me in grading the bibliographies!
Feeling unsure what to do for this assignment? Check out the overview page & video I posted last week.
Use the feedback your group received from me on both the recent UGAs where you practiced summarizing & evaluating a journal article when writing your bibliography entries.
Check out this example of a good annotated bibliography downloadsubmitted in one of my previous classes.
If you are unfamiliar with (or would just like a refresher of) either APA style or annotated bibliographies, here are some websites that provide you with information & examples.
In my opinion, one of the best online resources for APA style writing can be found at Purdue University’s Online Writing Lab (OWL) (Links to an external site.). Their Formatting and Style Guide shows you how to cite pretty much any type of source of which you can think!
Of course, feel free to ask me for some one-on-one assistance. I am more than happy to help you through the citation process!
University of Illinois’s writing center (Links to an external site.) has a nice page explaining annotated bibliographies.
The American Pyschological Association (APA) has an annotated bibliography on racism (Links to an external site.) intended as a resource for researchers working in this area. Specifically, check out Sections I – III. Keep in mind, though, that I am asking for some elements in your bibliography (e.g. evaluation of relevance to your project) that may not be present in these entries, given that APA’s purpose in providing these citations is slightly different from the purpose of this assignment. However, this will provide you with a sense of what your bibliography should look like.