An annotated bibliography is an organized list of sources (may be any variety of materials, books, documents, videos, articles, web sites, CD-ROMs, etc.) with an accompanying paragraph that describes, explains, and/or evaluates each entry in terms of quality, authority, and relevance.

An annotated bibliography may serve a number of purposes, including but not limited to:

A review of the literature on a particular subject

Illustrate the quality of research that you have done

Provide examples of the types of sources available

Describe other items on a topic that may be of interest to the reader

Explore the subject for further research

The annotated bibliography may be selective or comprehensive in its coverage. A selective annotated bibliography includes just those items that are best for the topic while an exhaustive annotated bibliography attempts to identify all that is available on a subject.

If you have any research questions, please find various ways of contacting the reference staff on the library homepage at https://library.swosu.edu/ask/.