Research Paper 03.2: Annotating Bibliographic Sources

Now that you have a better handle on the importance of bibliographic data, the notes part of the annotated bibliography that needs some explanation. Remember the purpose of the task is to show the journey of your research, while demonstrating your ability to evaluate your source material.

Mini-Objective 5: Begin evaluating and commenting on your source material associated with the bibliography information

This means that you must consider and evaluate the content of the source material that you gather as part of the project. As we have discussed, each item of your source material will have a different value, which may not yet be clear. Nevertheless, you can still begin evaluating them. Some things to consider are:

• Authority – Is the source accurate? Is the source author an expert that is credible and respected?
• Documentation – Does the source reveal its sources of information? Are there footnotes, citation, or further reading suggestions?
• References – What other authors or research is mentioned in the source? Is there an obvious cultural or political bias?

Already, there have been some interesting discoveries of factual discrepancies among sources. This is not as uncommon as you might think, especially when you begin doing serious, large scale research projects that include more current material. When this happens this is your first cue to do more research, seeking out deeper sources like a biography dedicated to your subject. Beyond that, you need to ask yourself why might there be a discrepancy as well as these additional questions:

• Why did the author of the source produce it?
• What kind of access to information did the author of the source have when they produced it?

Another discovery has been identical content in articles from different sources. Again, another more common instance than you might think. One of the issues, especially electronic sources, is that publishing companies essentially warehouse large quantities of published information in huge databases. So, a company like Gale, which you will see quite often, continues to buy enormous amounts of published content so they have exclusive rights to it. Being a publisher one of their goals is to sell products. Thus, very often they will repackage the same content to be sold in multiple reference books. Since electronic sources are essentially collections of printed material from multiple sources, there may be duplicates because of this attempt to sell more products.

What should be clear abundantly clear is that now that you know a fair amount about your author generally, you need to search for more in-depth resources (biography) specifically about your author. This is necessary to gather more specific depth and details, particularly concerning key moments or relationships in their life. You will want to capture the bibliographic information and evaluate the new source material. This additional source material will be useful now but will likely be of even more use later. Moreover, you need to generate some additional note cards from this new source material.

Mini-Objective 6: Secure additional in-depth resource material about your author and generate 15+ more note cards (40 total)

Once you have completed reading your selected novel, you will likely want to return to this new source material and mine it for even more specific depth and detail, based on the connections that you have made between the author’s life and their fictional work. It is the level of depth and detail that will ultimately be a determining factor in the quality of your final product.

Deadline: Thursday, March 27 – 15 additional note cards (40 total) &
preliminary annotated bibliography (3-5 sources)