43.386, History of College Prof. Carlsmith

43.386, History of College Prof. Carlsmith Guidelines for the Annotated Bibliography (rev. 9/21/2010) An annotated bibliography is a list of citations to books, articles, websites, and other primary or secondary documents that pertain to a specific theme (e.g., history of Dartmouth college). Each citation is followed by a paragraph that describes and evaluates the source (sometimes called the “annotation”). The purpose of the annotated bibliography is threefold: (1) to gather information about a specific theme that relates to our course and in so doing to develop research and library skills; (2) to present that information in a concise format to the instructor and other students, thus developing your writing and analytic skills; (3) to prepare for the Research Paper at the end of the semester.

The choice of topic is completely up to you. The topic must pertain to the history of colleges in medieval or early modern Europe, or in 18th/19th century America. All topics should be approved by the instructor, in order to avoid duplication and wasted effort.

The number of citations will vary according to the individual project, but should be somewhere in the neighborhood of 12-15 sources. Historians generally follow the Chicago Manual of Style for bibliographies; if you are already familiar with MLA or APA, that is acceptable. Each entry should be ca. 150-250 words. Thus it will not be possible to summarize the entire source; rather, the goal is to very briefly capture the essence of the source, and to evaluate its usefulness for our course. Your thoughtful evaluation of each source is an essential component of each annotation— we want to know what your opinion of this source is, and why you came to that conclusion. In addition to complete bibliographic information for each source, your annotation might include the qualifications of the author; any bias within the work; the intended audience for the work; the types of sources utilized by the author.You are welcome to list additional citations at the end of the Annotated Bibliography if you think they are relevant but you were not able to review them. Due Dates: Nov. 15, 2010 – topic for Annotated Bibliography due Nov. 22, 2010 – preliminary Annotated Bibliography due Nov. 29, 2010 – final Annotated Bibliography due The Annotated Bibliography is worth 100 points, or 20% of the final grade in the course.