Sociology Sources

Annotated Bibliography Examples

An Annotated Bibliography is a list of sources on a topic accompanied by your notes on what each source includes and why it is significant for your topic. Ideally, your Annotated Bibliography set up your Literature Review, helping you to situate your research within the larger body of scholarship on your topic. Sources in your Annotated Bibliography should help you to demonstrate:

• Which body of scholarship your paper is addressing
• What are the angles that other scholars have already used to investigate your topic
• Which ideas are basically agreed on by scholars; which ones are disagreed on; which ideas have not been fully explored

What is an Annotated Bibliography?
One-page guide from the University of Washington with an example in Chicago Style

Sample Annotated Bibliography in APA Style 
Although this is in APA style, the content and layout are very similar to what you will do in your assignment. More critical assessment of the sources would be an improvement, though. This example mostly provides a description of the sources' content without analyzing or critiquing them.

Annotated Bibliography - real life example
This example on Media created for the FCC shows how annotated bibliographies are used outside the classroom to inform policy decisions

Literature Review Examples & Guides

Example of  transforming an Annotated Bibliography into a Literature Review
This sample from the Ithaca College Library gives an example of how a student could take sources from an annotated bibliography and work them into a Literature Review.

Guide to making Literature Reviews
Very nice guide from UNC Chapel Hill gives lots of tips for how to organize your review logically and make a strong argument.

"Economic aspects and the Summer Olympics: a review of related research." by Evangelia Kasimati. International journal of tourism research 5, no. 6 (2003): 433-444.
This is an example of a Ph.D.-level annotated bibliography. Notice how the author divided the literature review into subsections and analyzed her sources through a few different lenses: 1. What overall view of the issue did they describe; 2. Methodologies; 3. Types of Economic Assessments; etc.; and she provides an analysis of where the scholarly literature is in agreement vs. disagreement, as well as pointing out gaps.