Annotated bibliographies and literature reviews have a close relationship with some differing features. Each can play an important role in telling the story of a particular field of research, and can even occasionally go hand in hand. What's the difference between an annotated bibliography and a literature review? Annotated bibliographies provide a list of sources paired with a description that provides a general overview of what the reader will find in each source. Literature reviews, on the other hand, take information from various related sources and compile that information in document that synthesizes the information by connecting similar points and contrasting differences from source to source. How have I used both tools throughout my MAE work? For some people, these two documents are stand-alone, unique finished products. For me, the annotated bibliography is an important step towards completing a final literature review. Whenever I write a literature review, I start by compiling a list of sources in a Google Doc that sound like they might be relevant to my topic. I find more than I need because I know that some of them might not actually be helpful after reading through. Once I have a list of sources, I read each one and as I am reading, I write a summary of the main ideas in each source in that Google Doc, underneath of each corresponding source. When I am done, I have a rough draft of an annotated bibliography. I can then go through and pull overarching themes out of my annotated bibliography, and use these to create an outline of my Literature Review. Here is an example of this annotated bibliography document, that I used to write my Literature Review rough draft during our summer courses. Why do I use this technique to organize my thoughts? I have tried other techniques like taking notes, making tables or mind mapping in the past, but I have found that creating the mind map actually slows down my progress and taking notes/making tables creates an extra step. I am a very linear thinker and prefer to synthesize my thoughts in a linear manner. Making this annotated bibliography is great because if I write my summaries really well, then I can actually copy paste language straight from my summaries into my final literature review. I have to be extremely careful, for this reason, that I am not lifting language directly from the source. I have to resist the urge to copy and paste or paraphrase with similar tone/word choice, because I could forget that I did that later on and accidentally plagiarize the original author's writing in my final product. If I read something in the article that I can't find a way to paraphrase well, I will label it as a "notable quote" in the document and then paste it in with quotations and a page number. This is another great technique because then when I go to write the literature review, I have the page number already and can quickly in-text cite my quote without having to slog back through the original source. One downfall to my technique is that sometimes I look back over my work and realize that a source I summarized doesn't make any sense and I can't actually include it in my literature review. It takes me 10-45min to write one of these summaries depending on the length of the source, so sometimes I find myself having wasted almost an hour trying to understand and summarize a text that I won't even actually use in the longterm. I try to remind myself, in these instances, that even though my work won't be used in the final product, it could be helpful in the future. I don't delete summaries from sources that I choose not use from my annotated bibliographies -- I just mark them on the document in a way that tells me, "hey, don't use this." That way, someday in the future when writing about a different topic, I can always go back and look through my sources to see if maybe one of my old sources could be useful. I am always open to learning new methods of organization, especially ones that work well for a linear thinker like myself, but for now I feel I have come up with a system that works well for me. What system do you all use? References Buttram, C, MacMillan, D., & Koch, R.T (2012). Comparing the annotated bibliography to the literature review. UNA Center for Writing Excellence.
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Emma BooneFirst year 8th grade PBL math/science teacher and graduate student, wondering a bunch and figuring a few things out here and there. Archives
December 2018
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