Business Finance

Part 2: Annotated Bibliography

An annotated bibliography is an organized list of sources such as books, articles, journals, web pages, videos, or other materials. Each source has an annotation, which is a brief (usually about 150 words) descriptive and evaluative paragraph that includes a summary of the source and notes about its credibility, quality, limitations, and usefulness for the writer. Your annotated bibliography must include five annotated sources per person, for a total of 20-25 sources per team. Instructions for creating an annotated bibliography are on the next page.

Evaluation Criteria for Annotated Bibliography

• Annotations will be evaluated based on the quality of items 1, 2, 3, and 4 on the next page.

HOW TO CREATE AN ANNOTATED BIBLIOGRAPHY

Basic Instructions

For each source you find, create an APA-style reference listing and write an annotation with these four parts:

1. Summarize the content of the source (based on your purpose)
2. Evaluate the source’s credibility and quality
3. Discuss any limitations of the source, such as timeliness or biased views
4. Describe the usefulness of the source to your research (using first person — “I”)

Sample

Doheny-Farina, Stephen. (1986). Writing in an emerging organization: an ethnographic study. Written Communication, 3(2). 158-185.

Stephen Doheny-Farina’s ethnography illustrates how to do an ethnographic study. He begins by doing a brief literature review and then finds an organization to study and constructs his interviews and completes his observations. His study looks at a company he calls Microware, Inc. that is on the verge of bankruptcy and is trying to write a new business plan to gain investor support. The study goes into detail about the controversy surrounding collaborative writing of the new plan, and Doheny-Farina discusses how writing processes shape the organizational structure of an emerging organization. The article is from a peer-reviewed scholarly journal and is written by a communications professor. It’s pretty old (1986) but I think the information is still useful and relevant. While the study itself is only partially related to my project, the methods Doheny-Farina used are very interesting and are applicable to my research project. In fact, based on what I learned about interviewing from this article I’ve decided to use open-ended interviews with a selected few key informants as well as to observe WAC Committee meetings in order to gather the information I need.

How to Summarize the Content of a Source

• A summary is a restatement of the content of a source that aims to capture its main ideas. A good summary is brief, thorough, and objective. It devotes an appropriate amount of time to all the major points that support the text’s central idea. While it should be written in your own words, a good summary does not sacrifice accuracy or objectivity. Using third person is generally appropriate for summaries. Finally, a good summary employs quotations where appropriate (with quotation marks and proper APA formatting).

• Some written sources already include an abstract (introductory summary) or conclusion. If these are available, they can give you an overview of the material in the source. If these are not available, see the introduction (or introductory paragraphs) or last paragraph(s) to gain a better sense of the source’s purpose and main ideas. If an abstract or summary is available, you cannot simply copy it. You must summarize it in your own words and contextualize it in terms of your own research needs.