I've just started working my way through Saylor.org's HIST104: Historical Methodology - The Art and Craft of the Historian, and I'm now on Unit 2: Basic Historical Research Skills.
In lieu of me actually being in a class where things are discussed, I'll just write my thoughts about the materials here.
2.3 Conducting Research and Organizing Information
2.3.1 Developing an Annotated Bibliography
Reading: Dr. Steven D. Krause’s The Process of Research Writing:
This chapter explains what an Annotated Bibliography is (a list of sources on a particular topic with a brief summary of each that you will be "building" throughout your research), how to make one, and why it's an important thing for researchers to do (it's a system to keep track of evidence that you collect in your research).
Annotated bib. entries have two parts: the top is the citation (which varies according to style), and the second is the summary. The summary should be 'a sentence or two' to remind you, and to show other researchers, what a certain piece of research is about. It should be neutral and devoid of personal opinions or direct quotes. It should be written to help others interested in the same topic be able to assess what sources they themselves should check out.
The author concedes that summaries can be hard to write, especially if the source is long and/or complicated, but these guidelines should be kept in mind while writing them. He also warns against cutting & pasting lines from abstracts into the summary. That is both plagerism, and defeats one of the purposes of the annotated bib-- to help the researcher understand and explain what they are reading and how it may fit in to the overall project.
Two of the examples the author gives are:
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