Annotated bibliography
Bibliografi beranotasi

Introduction

This guide is basically a set of steps on how to write an annotated bibliography, and it gives a brief example of what a final document should look like.

If this is your first time writing an annotated bibliography or if you are writing a thesis or dissertation, the easiest way to use this guide is to work through the steps one at a time with a tutor, so that you can ask questions and get explanations as you go. (The hardest way is to work through the steps by yourself without help.)

You need to be very methodical in organizing your files of notes and your folders so that saved documents are easy to locate and to retrieve. This is especially necessary in a big project. For example, you might find 500 or more sources relevant to your topic, so you'll need a simple system that is easy to use. Students tend to create their own systems and a system that works well for one researcher might be confusing for others.

The point of the procedure is to get maximum efficiency. Writing a long literature review will be much easier and less overwhelming if you have a good method, because it reduces some complicated tasks to simple steps. By being less time-consuming, an efficient search method will allow you to spend most of your time and effort thinking about significant matters relevant to your topic, not in the mechanical procedures of searching and organizing.

Summary

The main steps are:

1. Prepare before you start
2. Create a new folder and a new file
3. Write an introduction
4. Plan your search (Select search engines and repositories, and make a list of key words that define precisely what you are looking for.)
5. Use those search words to find articles.
6. Write comments and bibliographic information for each article.
7. Write a conclusion.
8. Edit the whole document.

What is an annotated bibliography?

An annotated bibliography is a set of notes exploring written sources on a particular topic. Each source requires at least three types of notes:

1. What the author says
2. Your evaluation
3. Bibliographic details (author’s name, article title, publisher, etc.)

An annotated bibliography is suitable as an assignment in a regular course. It is also the first stage in writing a literature review for a research paper, such as a journal article, a thesis, or a dissertation.

See the Annotated Bibliography example

Your topic

To write an annotated bibliography, you must have a suitable topic. If it's an assignment, follow your instructor's instructions. If it's a research paper of some kind, it will the topic of the research paper.

Check what your institution requires

How many words and how many sources? The number of different sources will depend on the type of writing task:

1. Assignment in a regular course: Follow the lecturer’s instructions
2. Journal article: Aim for around 15 of the most relevant articles (minimum 10, maximum around 25).
3. Thesis: Follow your supervisor’s instructions.
4. Dissertation: must be comprehensive.

Articles in research journals usually consist of 6,000–8,000 words, with some reaching up to 10,000 words, so space is very limited. Many journals set a word limit, so your article will be rejected if it is too long. If possible, limit it to around 1000 words.

You can also include books, and these are more important in some fields than others. Some are available in Google, but not as full texts. Otherwise, books tend to be unavailable on the internet.

Check your equipment

Make sure you have a computer, a word processor (e.g. MS Word, LibreOffice), and a reliable Internet connection. Although you may be able to do some reading using a mobile phone, you cannot write a literature review with such a device.

Create a new folder and a new file

Your goal at this stage is to have a full set of complete sources in one folder on your computer. Create a new folder and a new word-processing file. This new file will be the first draft of your annotated bibliography.

Write a title and a brief introduction

Your readers need to know your purpose and topic, so it is best to begin by writing a title and a brief introductory paragraph. This will reflect the focus of your work, create a sense of unity, and show its boundaries. (You can modify it later on if necessary.)

Give the body a heading

The body needs a title to separate it from the introduction, and it can be any of the following: Annotated Entries, References and Annotations, Selected Bibliography.

Plan your search

The steps are as follows:

1. Select the search engine you will use. It should be specific to academic sources, especially journal articles, for example Google Scholar or Sinta. ERIC is excellent for education.
2. Create a list of search keywords that you can use in the search engine. The search engine can do the work of finding journal articles. Try the following suggestions to get ideas for keywords:
1. Use keywords from your topic, your purpose statement, and your research problem.
2. Use background reading when choosing a topic; it will help in identifying keywords, topics, and prominent authors in the field.

Examples of determining keywords:

• Topic: “The Influence of Using AI-Based Learning Platforms on the Learning Motivation of High School Students in Indonesia”
• Keywords: Platform, AI, Motivation, Learning
•  
• Topic: “Implementation of the Merdeka Curriculum in Schools in Remote Areas: A Case Study in East Nusa Tenggara”
• Keywords: Curriculum, Merdeka, Remote
•  
• Topic: “The Effectiveness of Using Educational Games as Literacy Learning Media for Elementary School Students in Urban Indonesia”
• Keywords: Games, Education, Teaching, Media, Learning, Literacy

Collect sources and write annotations

1. Conduct searches based on these keywords.
1. If you notice certain authors frequently appearing as leading thinkers on the topic, you can use their names as keywords and create folders for each name.
2. Other relevant topics may appear during your search, so add these topics as keywords. Follow up on new themes that emerge and any gaps that appear in the literature. As you learn more, some of these often become unexpectedly important.
2. For each item you find, first check whether it is relevant:
1. For journal articles, you usually only need to read the title to know whether you should continue reading.
2. If the title indicates relevance, read the abstract.
3. If the title indicates relevance, read the findings, which are usually placed near the end.
4. If the findings indicate it is still relevant, read the entire article carefully.
5. Check the publication year. Works older than a few years may not reflect current research, but some works are so important and relevant that they may still be useful.
6. If at any stage you feel it is not relevant, stop reading so you don’t waste time.
3. Write the full bibliographic reference.
1. Write the full publishing details for each item. Many journals now provide complete references on the front page of the article, so this task usually only requires copying and pasting. You may use Mendeley or Zotero for managing references.
4. Write intext references (if necessary).
1. If you will use the annotated bibliography to write a literature review, you will need to be able to move text around later on.
2. Write the in-text reference for each bibliographic item and include it in the annotation. For example, a Harvard-style in-text citation often looks like this: (Sutrisno, 2017, 21–32).
3. If the item is relevant at different points in the text, write in-text references related to each of your comments about the texts. Consequently, you might have multiple references in your annotation. For example, you might need to mention both (Sutrisno, 2017, 21–32) and (Sutrisno, 2017, 42).
5. Download and save a copy of each useful article.
1. If you are unsure whether the article is useful, save a copy, as it may be useful later.
6. Write your own summary.
1. Write a summary of the article’s main ideas (accurately) in your own words so you are sure you understand them.
7. Write your own comments.
1. Comments may include strengths, insights or unique information, weaknesses, limitations, relevance, and implications.
2. Include relevant direct quotations, with page numbers. Sometimes it is too difficult to improve the author's original wording.
3. Provide your evaluation, but “critique” does not always mean “finding faults.” You will find that some sources are very helpful and you will not find faults in them. In fact, you may more easily develop their work. (Some students think that critique means finding faults in everything.) Just write factually about the source material you read. You do not need to add or develop your own ideas at this stage.
4. Record your comments clearly in complete sentences so you will understand them later. (You don’t want to come back to your notes later and think, “What did I mean by that comment?”) If you make notes on a piece of paper, add them into your well-organized computer document as soon as possible.
5. Compare the authors’ views. What is similar? What is different?
6. Identify leading thinkers in your topic area and key papers, and comment more on their contributions.
7. When you have critiqued the ideas in a major source, you don’t always need to critique additional documents that are very similar and represent the same ideas. Some sources are sufficiently represented by a reference such as “ibid.” or “see also.”
8. Check your notes
1. Make sure you have presented the article accurately and that the comments will make sense to a reader who has not read the article itself.

Let it develop

As you follow the instructions and find more sources, new themes may emerge for you to explore, causing you to try other keywords. You may also see gaps where nothing has been written. This will change the shape of your annotated bibliography.

Almost certainly, you will find that some search paths are not fruitful. Don’t worry. They can still help you gain a better understanding of the overall topic.

Write the conclusion

Write a conclusion that summarizes the state of research on your topic.

Refine your writing

You should assume that your readers are educated people who know nothing about your specialized topic. Provide enough detail to avoid any informational gaps. Your readers likely have no prior knowledge of everything you know about the topic.

Edit your document so that it is easy for others to understand. For example, comments must be complete sentences, not just rough notes.

Do the final editing: Check reference details, grammar, punctuation, spelling, and so on.

You now have an annotated bibliography.

This is the right time to show it to your supervisor and discuss it.