Annotate Bibliography

Annotated Bibliographies & Literature Reviews Engineering Annotated Bibliographies An annotated bibliography provides useful information in addition to the standard reference list of works consulted for your thesis project. In addition to your sources which were, or will be used, the annotated bibliography summarizes each reference and provides information about its relevance and intended use to your project.

Your sources should be appropriate for a paper submitted to a professional conference, so:

1. be careful of web resources; using .com sites does not produce sound professional research.

2. the bibliography should reveal a range and depth of research strategies and materials: refereed articles, books, texts, talks, interviews or presentations from experts.

3. give a 50-70 word annotation or summary of each source.

4. the references are given in numerical order, as cited within your paper following the IEEE citation style. 5. the references are double spaced, but the annotations are single spaced.

Good annotations:

1. are concise: you don’t have much space, so write a draft annotation, then edit.

Combine sentences to avoid repetition.

2. are complete: read the entire paper, book chapter or web page at least once fully to get a comprehensive grasp of the source.

3. describe what the source is trying to do, not just what it says. Present the source’s argument or purpose. Don’t just say “the article is about nanotubes,” as that does not provide sufficient information, whereas, “the author argues for the use of nanotubes for structural monitoring applications,” is much more useful.

4. show the relevance of each source to your thesis: because you have only a few words to describe a source, focus your annotations to the sections of the source that are the most relevant.

Examples of good annotations:

B. P. Betting. (n.d.). “Annotated Bibliography: Rotordynamics” [Online]. Available:

http://www.me.mtu.edu/~bettig/PowerEngineering/biblio.pdf [May 2, 2008]. N. Mead. (2005). “Requirements Engineering Annotated Bibliography” [Online]. Available:

https://buildsecurityin.us-cert.gov/daisy/bsi/articles/best-practices/requirements/231- BSI.html [May 21, 2008]. Donald W. Craik Engineering Library 204-474-6360 y [email protected] www.umanitoba.ca/libraries/engineering Engineering Literature Reviews The “purpose of a review is to analyze critically a segment of a published body of knowledge through summary, classification, and comparison of prior research studies, reviews of literature, and theoretical articles.” 1 Your topic will define your objective, the engineering problem or issue you are addressing, or your thesis argument. It is a piece of discursive prose and goes beyond an annotated bibliography as you are critically appraising and surveying the literature of your topic as a whole. The literature that you find will include scholarly articles, books and other sources such as technical reports, other theses or dissertations, standards, patents, or conference proceedings and will synthesize the results into a summary of what is and what is not known about your topic. Be sure to select the appropriate engineering databases!

Purpose of a Literature Review:

The purpose of a literature review is to convey knowledge and ideas that have been established on a topic, to identify the literature’s strengths and weaknesses, and to bring it up to date. The reasons include: 2 - to see what has and has not been investigated.

- to develop a general explanation for observed variations in phenomenon.

- to identify potential relationships between concepts and to identify researchable hypotheses.

- to learn how others have defined and measured key concepts.

- to identify data sources that other researchers have used.

- to discover how your research project is related to the work of others.

The literature review requires four stages: 3 1. Problem formulation—which topic or field are you examining and what are its component issues?

2. Literature search—find materials relevant to your subject being explored.

3. Data evaluation—determine which literature makes a significant contribution to the understanding of your topic.

4. Analysis and interpretation—discuss the findings and conclusions of pertinent literature.

For more information:

UW-Madison Writing Center. (2006). “Review of Literature” [Online]. Available:

http://www.wisc.edu/writing/Handbook/ReviewofLiterature.html [May 14, 2008].

D. Taylor and M. Procter. (2008, May 27). “The Literature Review: A Few Tips On Conducting It” [Online]. Available: http://www.utoronto.ca/writing/litrev.html [July 12, 2008].

1 UW-Madison Writing Center. (2006). “Review of Literature” [Online]. Available:

http://www.wisc.edu/writing/Handbook/ReviewofLiterature.html [Sept. 2, 2008].

2 Derived from F.D. Bluford Library. (2003). “How to Do a Literature Review” [Online]. Available:

http://www.library.ncat.edu/ref/guides/literaturereview03.htm [Oct. 1, 2008].

3 Adapted from University of California, Santa Cruz. (20050. “How to Write a Literature Review”[Online].

Available: http://library.ucsc.edu/ref/howto/literaturereview.html [Sept. 20, 2008].