Note to instructors
This exercise is designed to help students organize their thoughts on scholarly
works in preparation for a literature review or any essay that requires them to
engage with a body of scholarly literature. You should make sure to specify which
citation style you require (MLA, APA, Chicago, etc.), and you can also tailor the
assignment to the specific requirements of your discipline.
This document is intended to serve as a shared resource for instructors in the Harvard
community. Please feel free to download and adapt it for your course. If your students
ask about its origin, please attribute it to the Harvard College Writing Program.
Handout for students
Annotated Bibliographies
An annotated bibliography is list of sources that typically includes three parts: 1)
citation information for each source, 2) a summary of each source's argument, and
3) your own thoughts about the role that each source might play—often in relation
to other sources—within your argument. Let's look at the parts of an annotated
bibliography and think about how they make research more productive:
I. Citations
What Are the Stakes?
Proper citation allows writers to acknowledge the other voices in their work and
helps readers locate those voices in the original source. Which citation style you use
will depend on the discipline in which you're writing, and in this course we are
using [SPECIFY CITATION STYLE].
Why Is It So Useful?
 A full citation allows you to (re)locate a source that you've previously used,
even if you've lost a hard copy or file.
 Having your citations taken care of early in the research process eliminates
the colossal headache that happens when you're approaching a deadline and
haven't started your Works Cited page.
II. Summary
What Are the Stakes?
Summarizing a secondary source can be a great way to capture its central claim (=
thesis) as well as the major moves that it makes in support of that claim (= primary
figures, examples, key terms, etc.). The length of your summary will depend on how
important the role of a given source will likely be in your essay, but around 150
words is a rough ballpark figure.
Why Is It So Useful?
 Summary is always an act of interpretation tied to the needs of your
argument, and by summarizing your secondary sources, you're in fact
negotiating what you think your argument might be.
 If, in the course of your own essay, you find yourself engaging a secondary
source at length, you might find it useful to introduce a scholar's argument by
means of orientation ("In a recent study, “Scholar A” discusses the trend
of…"). In those instances, the summary from your annotated bibliography
can be an effective—and efficient—resource.
 As great as marginal notes and highlighted passages may be, taking a few
minutes to sketch out a summary of a book or article can save you untold
aggravation down the line. The half-life of a coherent account for any given
article in the head of a busy college student—or instructor—is measured in
days, if not hours. By writing out your summaries while the argument is still
fresh in your mind, you both a) make the time you spent reading as
productive as possible and b) lessen the chances that you'll spend the night
before our draft is due skimming back through all of your sources.
 Lastly, it is true that many articles—especially outside of the humanities—
will have an abstract at the beginning. Nonetheless, that abstract isn't in your
own words and isn't written with an eye to your argument (which, for the
purposes of your essay, makes it much less useful than a summary).
Abstracts can help you decide whether to read a book or article, but they
don't help you get words on the page.
III. The Imagined Role of a Source
When you're locating and reading a given source in the course of your research, it
can be helpful to imagine the possible role that the source might play in your essay.
Individual sources can help provide background material for arguments, define key
terms, provide evidence, offer counterargument, etc.
Why Is It So Useful?
 By imagining the role that a source might play in your argument, you're in
essence imagining the structure of your argument. As with summary (see
above), this element of an annotated bibliography can help you think about
thesis / evidence alignment while your argument is still in its formative
stages.
 Sometimes a source will be a joy to read, and yet there isn't a clear role for it
in the argument you're making; sometimes a source will bore you to tears,
and yet it does a clear job of representing one of the positions within the
debate into which you're intervening. Keeping in mind the use value of a
source during your research can help you decide:
a) which roles have been filled by sources in your
bibliography
b) whether a source is indeed filling a role within your
argument that needs to be filled
 By including a concrete note, you're less likely to look at a summary you
wrote two weeks ago and think, "Why did I think this article would help me
with my essay?”
IV. Examples and More Info:
There are many helpful online resources about annotated bibliographies, and I've
included a couple of links here to sites that provide further information as well as
sample annotations. And don't forget—if you have any questions about your
annotated bibliography, be in touch with me or a reference librarian!
Purdue Online Writing Lab: http://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/614/1/
Cornell University Library:
http://olinuris.library.cornell.edu/ref/research/skill28.htm