An annotated bibliography is a complete listing of your research on any given subject, including both a bibliographical citation and the annotation.  Each entry in the annotated bibliography consists of these two elements:

1. The bibliographic citation, in correct Modern Language Association (MLA) format.  You may be used to thinking of this as the works cited entry; these citations must be arranged in alphabetical order, as they should be in your final works cited as well.
2. Second, the annotation.  The annotation should be about a 2-4 sentence description of the source's argument or contents, whether that source is a book, an article, or a website.  Each entry in the annotated bibliography needs an annotation; you will delete these annotations in the final bibliography for your paper, which will include only the works you have actually cited in your paper.

The annotated bibliography you submit for your research paper should include all the works you've located on your topic to date; this comprehensive listing should largely reflect your completed research.  In other words, by that date, you should have located all the material you might use for your paper, with the exception perhaps of interlibrary loan materials that you have yet to receive.  A correctly formatted annotated bibliography should resemble your works cited page for the final paper, and should likewise include each entry in alphabetical order. 

You will write bibliographic citations for each of your sources, following correct Modern Language Association (MLA) citation guidelines. Iin other words, you're writing your works cited for your paper now). Your best resource for writing the bibliographic citations is your Pocket Style Manual. If you don't have a handbook or style guide that gives directions on MLA format, you may use the MLA Style Manual, available in any library reference collection.  You may also refer to the material on research and documentation available at Purdue University's Online Writing Lab (OWL). You may also consult Citing Internet Resources for help in this area.

An annotation is simply a brief description of the source's argument or contents, whether that source is a book, an article, or a website.  Do not use any abstract included in the library description for the source; write this yourself. Each annotation should be about 2-4 sentences in length. You can often skim the article and get a good sense of the contents for a bibliography, although of course you will need to read the source more carefully for your final research.  

In each of my classes, I may specify a different number of required sources for a paper and for an annotated bibliography; you should review the particular requirements of your assignment for more information on these requirements.  Usually you should plan to have more entries on your annotated bibliography than you expect to use in your final paper, since not every resource that you locate will be useful for writing your paper.  In my English 101 and 102 courses, for example, I generally require six sources cited in the search paper, so I likewise require that your annotated bibliography should probably have at least 10 sources listed there, in addition to your primary sources.  Your bibliography may also include sources here that you've requested through ILL, but haven't yet recieved; in that case, simply note in the annotation that you have not yet received the source.  Please be sure you understand how many sources are required for your bibliography; this assignment constitutes a significant component of your grade (in English 102 and 102, for instance, it counts as 20 participation points).  If you have been asked to submit your bibliography electronically, please name the file Your Last Name Your First Name bib.doc (for example, Hammond Lisa bib.doc) and post the file in Blackboard by the assigned due date; please use these directions for submitting papers.

Don't forget to include your internet sources as well as your books and articles.  Remember to check Citing Internet Resources for help in this area.  One thing to note, though:  when writing your bibliographic entry for a web site, please copy and paste the URL into the entry, rather than attempting to type it out by hand.  This is an important step towards accuracy in your bibliography; you only have to mistype one letter to render the URL useless.  When you do, this, though, most likely your word processing program will turn the URL into a hotlink (the address will appear underlined and in blue just like a link on the WWW, and will also function as a link, so that when you click on it, your word processor or browser will open the web page).  That's not a problem, but the program may remove your angle brackets around the URL in doing so.  If that happens, just go back after the autoformatting is applied and retype them.  And if you don't like the URL included as hyperlink, just right click on it and look for the option to remove the hyperlink formatting.

An annotated bibliography is not the same as a works cited in a paper.  In this class, you turn in the annotated bibliography well in advance of the paper, in part to demonstrate the progress you're making on your research (and also to make sure you work on your research papers well in advance of their due date!).  When you turn in your paper, however, you will turn in a Works Cited page, which lists only the sources you cite in your paper.  The works cited page doesn't include the annotations, only the bibliographical citations.  Any research paper turned in without a works cited will receive a zero, regardless of whether you turned in an annotated bibliography separately.