Sustainable Business Leadership: Writing & Citing

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An annotated bibliography includes a summary and/or evaluation of each of the sources. Depending on your project or the assignment, your annotations may do one or more of the following.

• Summarize: Some annotations merely summarize the source. What are the main arguments? What is the point of this book or article? What topics are covered? If someone asked what this article/book is about, what would you say? The length of your annotations will determine how detailed your summary is.
• Assess: After summarizing a source, it may be helpful to evaluate it. Is it a useful source? How does it compare with other sources in your bibliography? Is the information reliable? Is this source biased or objective? What is the goal of this source?
• Reflect: Once you've summarized and assessed a source, you need to ask how it fits into your research. Was this source helpful to you? How does it help you shape your argument? How can you use this source in your research project? Has it changed how you think about your topic?

Format for APA Style Annotated Bibliography

The first line of the citation begins on the left margin, and the subsequent lines after the first line of the citation are indented as hanging indents. The bibliographic information: Bibliographic information of the source (the title, author, publisher, date, etc.) is written in APA Style for citation format. For more help with formatting, see our APA for Business Sources handout.

The annotation underneath, the entire annotation is indented several more spaces to the right so that the annotation is clearly separated from the bibliographic information in the citation. The annotations for each source are written in paragraph form. The lengths of the annotations can vary significantly from a couple of sentences to a couple of pages. The length will depend on the purpose. If you're just writing summaries of your sources, the annotations may not be very long. However, if you are writing an extensive analysis of each source, you'll need more space.

Example of APA Style annotated citation (from Cornell University Library) : 

This digital story is intended to help students understand plagiarism, a form of copyright violation. Students are encouraged to discuss the topic with their instructors to gain a clear understanding