Keeping an Annotated Bibliography

As a continuation of helpful things for researchers, here is another hint Dr. Marian Petre reminds us to keep in mind when researching/writing.

One of the things that established researchers have is a working knowledge of the relevant literature. Most established researchers have a core repertoire of some 100-150 works on which they can draw readily. These are a useful selection from the hundreds or thousands of articles and books the researcher has digested over time. The annotated bibliography is an effective mechanism for facilitating this acquisition and for keeping record of the majority of papers that fall outside the core.

What the annotated bibliography should include

It should include, as a minimum:

• the usual bibliographic information (i.e., everything you might need to cite the work and find it again)
• the date when you read the work
• notes on what you found interesting / seminal / infuriating / etc. about it. (The notes should not just be a copy of the abstract; they should reflect your own critical thinking about your reading. They can be informal, ungrammatical, even inflammatory as long as they retain meaning about your reading. If you read a paper more than once and get different things from it, then add to the notes but do keep the original notes, which can prove useful even if you've changed perspective or opinion.)

It can include many other useful things, e.g.:

• where the physical copy of the work is (e.g., photocopied paper, book borrowed from the library, book in one's own collection)
• keywords, possibly different categories of keyword
• further references to follow up
• how you found the work (e.g., who recommended it, who cited it)
• pointers to other work to which it relates
• the author's abstract