CMS150 - Winter 2001

Trials of Conscience: Litigation

and the Rhetoric of Identity

 Bibliograph Annotations


One of the written assignments you will hand in as you prepare your web site is an annotated bibliography. Your bibliography must satisfy two requirements: bibliographic form and annotation content.

Bibliographic Form:

For every thing you can think of, some very anal retentive people have designated the proper form by which it should be cited (this includes web sites and conversations with friends). The Bates College Statement on Plagiarism contains excellent information about citation format. Good books to consider are Kate L. Turabian. A Manual for Writers of Term Papers, Theses, and Dissertations (University of Chicago Press) [this is what I used in college] and University of Chicago Press, A Manual of Style [this is what I used in grad school - either is great, Turabian is easier to use than the Chicago Manual]. There are other citation systems available; e.g., the MLA. If you are already familiar with a citation system, use it. If you are not, use the Manual of Style. Indicate at the end of your bibliography which system you used and what text you refered to when writing your bibliography.

If you have any questions about citation systems in general, or the proper form for a particular source you want to cite, please ask the reference librarians at Ladd Library.

Annotation Content:

An annotation is a brief (generally one to three paragraph) description of the source for which you provide a citation. For primary sources (e.g. trial transcripts, memoires, newspaper articles), your annotation will simply note that the source is a contemporary account of the trial on which you are writing. If there is something distinctive about the source (e.g., a newspaper editorial that in your opinion is very biased), you should note what that distinction is.

For secondary sources, your annotation should briefly summarize the author's argument and describe how it is relevant to your argument about the trial. If the author is writing from a clearly identifiable academic discipline or political ideology (e.g., anthropologist, deconstructionist, Marxist), you should note that fact in your annotation. For book length sources, you may find that it takes two to three pages to properly annotate your citation. No annotation, however, should take more than three (3) pages.

 

 

 


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