This pretest should be a diagnostic tool for you. If your score is high, you might be able to spend a little less time with this book than you originally planned. If your score is lower than you would like it to be, you may want to devote a little more than twenty minutes to practice each day in order to acquire some necessary research skills. | LESSON 20 Writing an Annotated Bibliography a Historiography and an Abstract LESSON SUMMARY This lesson will teach you how to prepare an annotated bibliography a historiography and an abstract. While these components of a research paper are not always required or requested by an instructor it is important to know what they are and how they can complement and enhance your paper. Annotated Bibliographies Even more than a bibliography an annotated bibliography is prepared especially for your reader with his or her concerns specifically in mind. In essence it tells a reader why and how a particular book is a helpful or important source of information on the topic. Many times an instructor will ask you to write an annotated bibliography before your paper is due so that he or she can read it and check to see whether or not you are using the right sources and if you are reading helpful information. An annotated bibliography also saves you valuable time and a great deal of effort. If an instructor requests an annotated bibliography reads it and returns it immediately he or she can often catch any errors in your research process before you spend too many hours in the library looking at useless sources. What exactly is an annotated bibliography Essentially it is a bibliography with notes or notations. What does this mean An annotated bibliography follows the same format as a regular 99 WRITING ANNOTATED BIBLIOGRAPHY HISTORIOGRAPHY ABSTRACT bibliography except that after you list all your information for each source you provide a sentence or two about why and how a particular book or piece of information is valuable to your research. Once again if you cannot state why a book is helpful to you or helps prove your thesis then you should not consult that particular book. For example an annotated bibliography or version of a book you have consulted might look like this Example Miller Sue. President Kennedy s White House Staff. London Oxford University Press 1989. This book is .
