Communication Sciences & Disorders: Researching the Literature

This instructor clearly explains the purpose of an annotation, what it is and what it is not.

NOTE: The citation is in the APA 6th edition format. The only change you will need to make is to add https://doi.org/ to the beginning of the DOI.

In Part 2, the instructor defines the three parts of an annotation:

• summary,
• evaluation,
• usage.

Depending on your assignment, your annotation may or may not contain all three.

Annotated bibliographies tell the story of the critical thinking that goes on during the information seeking and selection phases of literature research. The purpose of an annotated bibliography is to document your review of literature on your topic and to illustrate the quality of research that you have done. In other words, it is an illustration of your process and your reasoning (critical thinking!) behind your selection of articles.

For research in this course, annotations should consist of the following:

1. A properly formatted citation in APA style.

2. One to two well-constructed paragraphs which accomplish the following:

• • Establish the credibility of the source
    • identify the type of information (trade journal article, scholarly journal, peer-reviewed article, government report, editorial, etc.)
    • note the author'(s') affiliations and/or credentials (laundry lists are not necessary)
  • Describe the content (focus) of the item 
  • Highlight any conclusions the author(s) may have made
  • Describe the usefulness of the item to your review
    • For example, how is this different from your other selections?
    • Does this fill a gap in the information provided by other sources or reinforce?
    • Does it add a different perspective?
  • Provide a brief explanation of how/where you found the source (your search strategy). 
    • For example, did you find it using backward or forward citation searching and from what particular article? What key terms did you use? Which search tool did you use? Research@UWW? A database such as Ebsco's Communcation Source? Google Scholar?  

Example annotation 1

Example annotation 2