Colonial & Modern Latin American History Resources

A bibliography is a list of books and articles on a particular topic. An annotated bibliography is a bibliography in which each book or article has an annotation, or note, which describes and evaluates the item.

The annotations are relatively brief, usually about 150 words, explaining how a source is relevant and valuable to your research.

Writing annotated bibliographies is an excellent way to...

1. learn to do academic research using research databases, 
2. learn to identify and evaluate scholarly sources,
3. learn about and organize your thoughts on a topic, and
4. practice citing sources.

A good annotation summarizes and evaluates each source. A good annotation does the following:

• discusses the writer's background/credibility
• summarizes the content of the source
• describes the usefulness of the source
• draws connections between the source content and the student's research topic
• begins with a properly formatted citation

Remember, you are demonstrating how and why this source is relevant and valuable to your research topic.