An annotated bibliography is a list of citations, like a regular bibliography, but with an added twist. For each reference, you include a brief paragraph—or annotation—that summarizes, evaluates, and reflects on the material. It can act as a literature review outline.
Here's why it's useful:
It helps you remember your research. As you're gathering sources for your literature review, writing these quick summaries forces you to engage with the material and remember why you chose it.
It helps you see the bigger picture. By summarizing each source, you can easily see how they all connect to your project. This makes organizing your thoughts for the full literature review much easier.
It's a shortcut to your final draft. The work you put into the annotated bibliography becomes the foundation for your literature review. You can literally copy and paste your annotations and then expand on them to write a more detailed analysis of the sources you've found.
Creating an informal annotated bibliography will give you a solid foundation for your literature review, which is a required part of this course. It's a key step in helping you move from simply gathering information to critically analyzing and synthesizing it for your design project.
