1. GENTRIFICATION – What factors contribute to a neighborhood’s gentrification? Make sure that you state your research question in your annotated bibliography.

2. RESEARCH your question using the resources of the university’s libraries. Make sure

that you fully take advantage of the resources at your disposal. Google searches will not do.

Wikipedia entries or book reviews will not be accepted as sources.

In this step you have to make decisions regarding which sources are more important than

others to your research question. EDIT your bibliography down so that you have 10-15 sources.

As you edit your sources, you may find it useful to combine certain sources under subheadings.

4. Identify the most important 5 of your sources and ANNOTATE them. This means that

you understand the structure and main arguments of the annotated source. You can achieve

this without reading a book or an article in its entirety. Briefly describe each source and state

its main thesis in 3-4 sentences. The resulting document should not be longer than 3 pages.

As you make your bibliography be sure to use scholarly conventions; MLA or the Chicago Manual of

Style (www.chicagomanualofstyle.org)

WRITING AN ANNOTATED BIBLIOGRAPHY

What is an annotated bibliography?

An annotated bibliography gives an account of the research that has been done on a given topic. Like any bibliography, an annotated bibliography is an alphabetical list of research sources. In addition to bibliographic data, an annotated bibliography provides a concise summary of each source and some assessment of its value or relevance. Depending on your assignment, an annotated bibliography may be one stage in a larger research project, or it may be an independent project standing on its own.

Selecting the sources:

The quality and usefulness of your bibliography will depend on your selection of sources.

Define the scope and limits of your research carefully so that you can make good judgments about what to include and exclude:

• What problem am I investigating? What question(s) am I trying to pursue? If your bibliography is part of a research project, this project will probably be governed by a research question. If your bibliography is an independent project on a general topic (e.g. aboriginal women and American law), try formulating your topic as a question or a series of questions in order to define your search more precisely (e.g. How has American law affecting aboriginal women changed as a result of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms? How have these changes affected aboriginal women? How have aboriginal women influenced and responded to these legal developments?).

• What kind of material am I looking for? (academic books and journal articles? Government reports or policy statements? articles from the popular press? primary historical sources? etc.)

• Am I finding essential studies on my topic? (Read footnotes in useful articles carefully to see what sources they use and why. Keep an eye out for studies that are referred to by several of your sources.)

Summarizing the argument of a source:

An annotation briefly restates the main argument of a source. An annotation of an academic source, for example, typically identifies its thesis (or research question, or hypothesis), its major methods of investigation, and its main conclusions. Keep in mind that identifying the argument of a source is a different task than describing or listing its contents. Rather than listing contents (Example 1 below), an annotation should account for why the contents are there (Example 2).

Gentrification – Research Question – What factors contribute to a neighborhood’s gentrification?

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