Due Date

  • Friday, November 10, 2017 by 5pm (via course website)

Objective

Students in History 204 should create an annotated bibliography of at least six (6) secondary sources (including about half of them as academic monographs and half as journal articles) for their final research journal entry.

Grading

  • Bibliography entries will be graded by attention to annotation guidelines, as well as by research effort and quality of annotaton.  No images or other design elements are expected in this particular entry.

Guidelines

  • PREFACE.  Begin your annotated bibliography post with a short paragraph describing the topic of your bibliography and explaining its relevance for your assigned Dickinson class.
  • STYLE.  Organize your bibliographic entries in alphabetical order by author last name, put the main bibliographic entry into bolded font, and include the annotated text underneath in standard paragraph format.  You should always include bracketed directions at the end of your entry header (as Prof. Pinsker does at the course syllabus) indicating whenever you have obtained sources form digital locations (i.e [JSTOR] or [GOOGLE BOOKS]).
  • LIBARY CATALOG.  The most important source for monographs in this assignment will invariably be the online library catalog interface.  Students should take special care to use the Advanced Search features and the hypertext links embedded in the Catalog Record.  Google Books is also an acceptable search tool to utilize here, but you must indicate in the annotation whether or not you were able to access the full text of the source.
  • JSTOR.  The most important source for journal articles in this assignment should be the JSTOR database available through the College Library database finder.  There are several other databases which include potentially relevant articles or essays for use as context, but JSTOR is likely to be the most productive single collection.
  • AMERICA: HISTORY AND LIFE.  The second most useful database source for journal articles in this assignment will be the AHL database available through the College Library database finder.
  • ADDITIONAL WORK.  Students who wish to pursue extra credit opportunities for this assignment should consider creating a well-produced podcast version of their annotations to supplement their written work.

Models to Consider

Reminders

  • Annotations can offer a particularly tempting plagiarism trap for students who consider attempting to rewrite abstracts or reviews by other authors.  Such violations of community standards are no more acceptable in this type of assignment than they would be in a full-fledged paper assignment.