Annotated Bibliography

Peer Response: Monday, November 16, 2009 (Arranged with Groups) Due: Wednesday, November 18, 2009 (Turned in Online)
In the previous paper, you worked with specialized texts about topics that (hopefully) interested you to produce and summary and analysis that addressed the text alone. In this assignment, you will have the opportunity to engage more texts in your research by producing an Annotated Bibliography. Audience and Purpose Like last time, your immediate audience will be your peers and me. However, this sort of assignment is not unusual in other areas of academia, and sometimes used in variations by businesses. To that end, be aware that this may be the sort of thing you will be asked to do again. Assignment Annotated Bibliographies usually follow particular forms: The first section (probably no more than a page) gives the reader s brief sense of the overarching topic of the project. The second section points to specific sources the researcher will use in writing about his or her topic. The second section follows a particular format. Each source begins with a citation, and are the citation is followed by brief synopses of the text including some information as to why the text will be useful to the larger project. Here is an example of an annotated bibliography entry:
Berkenkotter, Carol. Analyzing Everyday Texts in Organizational Settings. Gurak, L.J., & Lay, M.M. Eds. Research in Technical Communication. Westport, CT: Praeger. 2002. 47-66. In this article, Berkenkotter explains approaches to utilizing everyday texts (that is, audiotapes of meetings, e-mail exchanges, flowcharts, handouts, memos, and like texts) in research. The use of everyday texts in research implies that the research will have a social-constructionist influence, but also opens the research to rhetorical, discourse and genre analyses. She advises researchers to keep in mind that everyday texts, while they may hold a lot of information and artifacts of distinguishing characteristics of an organization individually must be considered in the larger context of the existing organization. That is, just a few everyday texts will not suffice. These texts offer a documentary reality of the organization that reflects the organizations values and codes, but they must be considered with other texts as well (intertextuality) as well as genre if researchers hope to be able to draw conclusions about the organization. She also explains the importance of a clear research question that would help the researcher narrow down his/her list of texts s/he will use for research and suggest the method of analysis to be used for the texts.

Entries should be about 100 to 175 words in length, and you will be required to use five sources for your own annotated bibliography. You may use the source you used for your last assignment. However, you will need to substantially reduce the text. Course Outcomes Through this assignment, I anticipate that we will touch upon the following course outcomes: control prewriting and planning strategies to arrive at a focused topic produce an outline or prospectus for a researched paper through the sequence of assignments, develop a body of knowledge and growing perspective on a topic 1

make choices in their own writing and articulate other options write in appropriate academic genres and computer media to communicate with different audiences identify an authors audience, purpose, argument, and assumptions (i.e., critical reading) in an analysis paper or class discussion locate and evaluate relevant scholarly and popular sources on a research topic using library resources; document sources ethically consistently follow standards of written, edited English

Paper Standards 1. Right-aligned or justified text. 2. 1" margins on the top and bottom, 1"-1 1/2" margins on the sides. 3. Numbered pages. 4. Your name somewhere on the first page. 5. No title pages. 6. Double spaced, no unique spacing between lines after paragraphs. 7. Serif typeface (Times New Roman and Georgia are fine, Pertpetua and Palatino look elegant but are extremely thin).