Due: The Friday of your stewardship week.
Purposes:
I intend this assignment and your work for the assignment to provide a variety
of benefits. In particular, I expect that they will
* help you further organize your thoughts about your stewardship topic;
* give you the opportunity to visit your sources in more depth;
* encourage you to visit the notion of an authoritative
source; and
* give you experience in a different kind of writing.
Background:
Bibliographies serve many purposes. They ground your work in a broader community. They tell your readers that you've read widely on your subject matter. They remind you to read widely on a subject matter. They can even provide reading lists for those interested in a subject.
Those who use bibliographies as reading lists appreciate more than a simple citation as they decide where to read further. In particular, they benefit from your comments. When you add short comments to a bibliography, you produce a work we might call an annotated bibliography.
On the subject of annotated bibliographies, the Chicago Manual of Style says
When a bibliography is intended to direct the reader to other works for further reading and study, an annotated bibliography is useful. This is a list of books (sometimes articles as well) in alphabetical order with comments appended to some or all of the entries. The comments may be run in ... or set on separate lines.
Assignment:
1. Pick ten authoritative sources related to your stewardship area. I would prefer that the sources take different perspectives on the area (e.g., come from different disciplines, argue opposite sides of the same issue).
2. Read each of those sources carefully.
3. Write a moderate-sized paragraph about each source. The paragraph should discuss
* the type of source (e.g., is it a journal article, newspaper article, opinion piece, something else?),
* the point of the source,
* the authority of the source (why we should consider it appropriately infomrmative for the topic at hand),
* limitations of the source, and
* any other potentially interesting aspects of the source.
Audience:
You are writing for your classmates. Your reader is generally interested in the subject of technology, but perhaps not in your particular subarea.
Reference Guidelines: Please use APA-style references.
References Used: In writing this assignment, I referred to the following sources (not all of which I agree with).
Fischer, Gayle V. (2000). Web Project: Why Do Women and Men Wear Different Clothes? A World History Sourcebook: Annotated Bibliography. Online resource availablel at (last modified 29 August 2002; visited 24 September 2003).
Rebelsky, Samuel (2003). Writing Assignment 4: Annotated Bibliography. Tutorial: Owning Bits. Online resource available at (last modified 30 September 2003, visited 22 February 2004).
University of Chicago Press (1993). The Chicago Manual of Style: The Essential Guide for Writers, Editors, and Publishers, 14th Edition. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.
Williams, Owen (undated). Writing an Annotated Bibliography. Crookston Library, University of Minnesota, Crookston. Online resource available at (last modified 7 March 2003; visited 24 September 2003).
Warning! Some online examples of annotated bibliographies repeatedly use the word I
in the annotations. I would prefer that you keep yourself out of these paragraphs.
Sunday, 22 February 2004 [Samuel A. Rebelsky]
* Created.
* Based primarily on .
* This version available at .