Annotated Biblio: Extended

The annotated biblio was to be due this Tuesday. A couple of people have asked for extensions, so it is now due this Friday, November 2, by midnight for everyone. Note that this doesn’t mean you have to use the extension, but if you need it, there it is.

I’ve gotten a few questions on what is expected, since I was surprised to find that for some of you this is your first annotated biblio. The assignment is meant to provide an opportunity to help prepare for your final white papers, and to give me an opportunity to make sure you are making progress in the right directions and hopefully allow for some form of course-correction. More specifically:

* Your annotated bibliography should be posted to your lead author’s blog no later than midnight on November 2.

* The citations should be in APA or MLA format. You should boldface, ourdent, or otherwise separate the citations from the annotations.
* The annotations should be in the range of 100-200 words each, depending (naturally) on how much there is to summarize. They should (a) briefly summarize the argument of the article, (b) evaluate the article critically, with special attention to (c) how you will make use of the article to provide evidence for your white paper.

* Your bibliography should consist largely of scholarly or trade articles or books, not items found in the popular press. In general, the best place to draw from is peer-reviewed journals and scholarly books, though trade journals (journals that are intended for the industry, like Broadcasting & Cable) are also acceptable in many cases. You should have a minimum of eight scholarly/trade sources, but this is very much a minimum.

* You may draw from newspaper articles or magazine articles as primary sources, but these should be used far more sparingly as they do not carry much weight. One or two references from places like the New York Times or the MIT Tech Review are fine, but journalistic sources should provide only basic facts. If you want to make use of analysis, draw on experts.

* If the source is on the web, feel free to link to it, but if you are using web-available sources, you need to be especially cognizant of their reliability.

* If you find that an author’s own abstract is already the best summarization, you can use part of it, but be sure to place it within quotation marks.

* There are lots of good (and many poor) examples of annotated bibliographies on the web. Feel free to look at these for some ideas. There are also some decent guides on how to go about writing annotated bibliographies: here, here, here, and here, for example.