HIST 222- HISTORY OF THE MIDDLE AGES
HOW TO PREPARE AN ANNOTATED BIBLIOGRAPHY
A bibliography is a list of book about a specific subject or used/referred within a specific
work. An annotated bibliography does not only contain the reference information for a
book, but also a short note on the book, in a style of a very short review, to give the
readers a little info.
NOTE: This bibliography will include only the SECONDARY SOURCES!
Steps to create an annotated bibliography for HIST 222.
[1] Papal Inquisition (Gregory IX, Dominicans, Franciscans...)
[2] Medieval Heresy (Waldensians, Cathars,...)
[3] Medieval Universities (Paris, Oxford and Bologna universities, study of Law,
Medicine, Arts, Theology...)
[4] 12th century Renaissance (the humanist movement of the 12th century)
[5] Medieval Technology (advancements in Cathedral building, optics, warfare,
clocks)
[6] Women in the Middle Ages (noble women, artisan women, nuns and beguines)
[7] Medieval Papacy (Popes, church councils, bishops ...)
[8] Cities in the Middle Ages (Italy, Low Lands, Social problems)
[9] Medieval Commerce and Economy (trade fairs, trade items, commerce with
the East)
[10] Crusades
[11] The Empire and its relations with the papacy and other states
[12] The Black Death and its impact
[13] The Byzantine Empire
[14] Islam’s expansion in Europe (North Africa, Iberia, missionary activities..)
[15] The Vikings and their travels and conquests
[16] Monasticism and Hermitism (Benedictines, Cluny, Cistercians...)
[17] Medieval Apostolic movements and mendicant orders (Franciscans,
Dominicans, lay movements...)
[18] Medieval England (Anglo-Saxon kingdom, Norman conquest, Angevin
dynasty...)
[19] Medieval France
[20] Medieval Italy
[21] Iberian Kingdoms (Andalusia, Aragon, Castille..)
[22] Books in the Middle Ages
Step 1: You will choose one of the subjects listed above. You will look for the books on
this subject. Your objective is to find the books most closely related on your subject. Part
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of your grade for this bibliography will be given according to your success of location the
most relevant books.
Step 2: One of the most essential starting points of any research is creating keywords.
Although this might look like a straight-forward task, it is not in reality. The inclusion of
some words in the keyword searches might make a great difference to the list of books
you will get from a search engine. Remember although you need to list at least 40 items,
it will contribute positively to your grade if you list more books and articles. Hence, you
will need a lot of good keywords that will make you find the books relevant to your
theme.
To find the relative keywords, you will need to get some introductory information about
your subject. Read about your subject in a general history book or encyclopedia.
Particularly watch out for synonyms. [For example, the synonym of the Franciscan Order
is Order of Friars Minor. You can use both phrases as keywords] Let’s say for example
that your subject is “Books in the Middle Ages”, then your keywords can be:
book, student, school, intellectual life, education, reading, scribe (those who copy books),
science, library, manuscript (since books in the Middle Ages were hand-written), writing
all of these keywords should be used together with the keywords ‘medieval’, ‘the Middle
Ages’ or ‘history’.
Step 3. Once you note down the keywords, you can start your search in the electronic
search engines, databases and library catalogues. First of all, start with EMU library. If
you find a few books in the library relevant to your subject, then check these books out of
the library and look at their bibliographies. The titles of the books and articles in the
bibliography might give you an idea about whether they are relevant to your subject or
not. Note down the entire reference info for these books.
Step 4. Start an ‘Author list’. That means make a list of the names of the historians who
have written books on your subject.
Step. 5 Use the Electronic Journal Databases in the website of the EMU library to make a
search for articles using all the keywords in your list. Particularly, use JSTOR, Oxford
University Press, Taylor and Francis. Note down all the articles you find here that are
relevant to your subject. To understand whether they are relevant or not, you can read the
abstracts of the articles. (An article abstract is written by the author of the article and
aims at informing the reader about what the article. It is NOT a review, therefore you
cannot use it when you write article reviews.)
Step 6. Once you are sure that you have used all the resources in EMU, you can start
using other electronic sources available to you on the internet. A small selection of these
is given on my website. You can use library catalogues of other major universities of the
world. Use also the Author List you have made. Generally, historians write more than
one book or article on the same subject. Entering author’s name to these engines will help
you locate the rest of the author’s works.
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Step 7. At this point you should have your bibliography (without the annotations) ready.
Write down all the bibliography in computer, using the MRHA style guide linked at my
website. A style guide is a guide for formatting the reference information for the
resources you have used in any work you write. All historians around the world write
their works using one of the available style guides.
Step 8. Now you will need to start doing the annotations. An annotation should include
---the subject of the book or article (do not repeat the title, give a more thorough
explanation)
---which time period it concerns.
---in which ways is it useful (for example, is it useful because it is easy to read, because it
has excerpts from many primary sources, because it explains difficult matters in an
understandable way)
---For which historical theme the book is better to be used. (For example, a book on
medieval papacy can have a long chapter about a single pope (for example Gregory I),
but be shorter on other popes. So you can say “this book can be very useful for anyone
who studies Gregory I, but for other popes not so much”)
Remember as future historians, one of the tasks you will need to do in your life is to
distinguish in which ways you can profit from a resource (tr:kaynak). Every book and
article has something useful. Your job is to find that use.
Step 9. You do NOT have to read the 20 books and articles you select from your list for
annotation. It is enough at this stage if you look at the beginning and the end of the article
or the book to understand its main arguments and glance inside. The articles which will
be available to you through electronic databases, you will need to glance yourself (you do
not have to read them all). For the books you have listed in your bibliography but which
you cannot find in the university library, you will need to learn about their contents by
way of Internet. If you simply enter the book’s title on Google, you will get information
concerning this book from its publisher’s website.
FORMAT OF YOUR BIBLIOGRAPHY
Normally, when you submit an article to an academic journal, you have to follow certain
formatting guidelines. You need to therefore get ready for this. All bibliographies should
be written in computer with Microsoft Word, Word Perfect or Open Office text editor
and they should be formatted in the following style. Any paper formatted in other style
will not be accepted:
Font size: 12 points
Font type: Times New Roman
Line spacing: Single space.
Leave one line empty between each successive entries.
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All margins (top, bottom, left and right) will be 3 cm.
All pages should be numbered.
As mentioned before, all items should be formatted according to MHRA style guide (see
my website)
SPELLING AND GRAMMAR CHECK
When you finish your essay, make sure that you do a spelling and grammar check. To do
is, go to “Tools” menu in Word and choose “Spelling and Grammar”.
DO NOT PREPARE A COVER PAGE PLEASE!
Instead,
--On the first page of your essay, write
YOUR NAME
THE COURSE CODE
THE DATE OF THE SUBMISSION
SUBMISSION GUIDELINES
Final date of submission for Annotated Bibliographies is 1st May 12.00 am.
How to prepare an academic article review
Golden Rule: A BOOK REVIEW IS NOT A BOOK SUMMARY.
The main objective of the article review is to develop your ability to notice and digest the
central arguments and to make a criticism of an academic work. (What are its strengths
and weaknesses?)
Steps for the Article Review
Step 1: You will choose one of the articles you list in your bibliography.
DO NOT start reading an academic article if you do not know much about its specific
subject. Find an encyclopedia (www.wikipedia.org) or a general history book, and read
about the people and events mentioned in the article.
Step 2: Read carefully the beginning (i.e. the Introduction) of the article.. Usually here
the historians explain their methodology, their approach to the subject, what questions
they have asked. This will give you an idea about what to expect in the rest of the article.
Step 3: Start reading the article. Each paragraph is dedicated to a specific argument, and
generally the first or the last sentence (sometimes both) will give you the idea of the
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argument of a paragraph. If you are interested in the argument, then read the whole
paragraph itself to see how the historian defended a particular argument.
Step 4: Start writing your review.
a.
In the introduction of your review state the subject of your article and which time
period it concerns.
b.
Then give the objective of the author or her main argument as you find it in the
introduction and/or conclusion.
c.
Comment on the author’s use of sources. There are non bibliographies in the
articles. You will need to look at the footnotes. How many primary sources does he use?
d.
The language of the article: Is it boring, or is it written well?
f.
Are there any subject that the author left out, but what else would you expect to
see in this article?
LENGTH OF YOUR REVIEW
Your assignment will be at least 1000 words. This means around 4-5 pages (doublespace) You can write more if you like, but not less.
FORMAT OF YOUR REVIEW
Normally, when you submit an article to an academic journal, you have to follow certain
formatting guidelines. You need to therefore get ready for this. All reviews should be
written in computer with Microsoft Word, Word Perfect or Open Office text editor and
they should be formatted in the following style. Any paper formatted in other style will
not be accepted:
Font size: 12 points,
Font type: Times New Roman,
Line spacing: Double space.
Paragraph indentation: First line
All margins (top, bottom, left and right) will be 3 cm.
All pages should be numbered.
SPELLING AND GRAMMAR CHECK
When you finish your essay, make sure that you do a spelling and grammar check. To do
is, go to “Tools” menu in Word and choose “Spelling and Grammar”.
DO NOT PREPARE A COVER PAGE PLEASE!
Instead,
--On the first page of your essay, write
YOUR NAME
THE COURSE CODE
THE DATE OF THE SUBMISSION
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SUBMISSION GUIDELINES
--The article reviews will be submitted until 15.00 on 6th April, 2007. No review will be
accepted after this date. Please submit your review with a copy of your original article.
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