Annotations and Evaluating Sources

What are Annotations?

Annotations are critical and descriptive evaluations of a source.

Writing annotations asks you to consider a source's creator, purpose, and relevance to your own project. Through this process, you will be prompted to think deeply about the reliability, validity, accuracy, authority, timeliness, and point of view of your sources.

Annotations done "the Otis way" encourage you to think critically about any information source. They also provide insight into your information evaluation process, which helps your instructor assess your information literacy skills.

Criteria for Evaluating Sources and Writing Annotations

When evaluating a source and writing annotations, you should consider the following criteria:

• Authority / Credibility
• Audience / Type of Source
• Purpose / Point of View
• Currency
• Coverage / Scope
• Relevancy

All of these criteria are interconnected. They reflect the core concepts of the ACRL's Framework for Information Literacy.

This form can help you write your annotations. It prompts you with questions related to the criteria for evaluating sources. Make sure to review and edit the end product!

Formatting the Annotated Bibliography

• Begin your Annotated Bibliography on a new page after your Works Cited list.
• Add the title: Annotated Bibliography Center the title. Do not add any extraneous formatting (e.g., do not italicize or make bold the title).
• Similar to the Works Cited list, add the citations you wish to annotate in alphabetical order.
  • Your citations should be stylistically consistent with your Works Cited entries (e.g., font, size, spacing, indents, citation style).
• Underneath each citation, write out the corresponding annotation.
• The text of the annotations should be indented one inch.
• Your professor should provide direction on whether to (A.) list out and label each criterion in brackets, or (B.) write it all out as a paragraph.

MLA Example

Standard MLA style is to write the annotation as a paragraph. Many faculty, however, will direct you to separate out the criteria and add brackets.

Image: Example of a formatted MLA annotated bibliography. Courtesy of easybib.com