Annotated Bibliography on Ishiguros "Never Let me Go"

Annotated Bibliography
Linda Rosenkranz
Houston Community College

• This is the assignment handout for Essay #2: The Annotated Bibliography. Try to begin writing it early. The assignment is not hard, but it does involve a lot of reading, notetaking, and time.

• NOTE: The assignment for Essay #2 is not an actual essay, but it"s important enough to count a major essay grade.

I. INTRODUCTION TO THE ASSIGNMENT:

This is a major grade that counts 15% of the semester grade. As you know, the focus for the research essay is the novel by Fazuo Ishiguro, Never Let Me Go (not the movie, TV series, or other venues).

BEFORE YOU GO FURTHER WITH THIS ASSIGNMENT, please read very carefully the two assignment files for the research essay:

• Parts I: General Information to the Research Essay
• Part II: Introduction to the Research Essay
• NOTE: The annotated bibliography and the research essay work hand in hand.

II. THE ANNOTATED BIBLIOGRAPHY:
In this assignment, you"ll search for four sources that discuss the novel and then report your findings in what is called an annotated bibliography. Please do not submit information About movies or other sources that do not relate directly to the novel itself, as they will not be counted.

III. BIBLIOGRAPHY VS. ANNOTATED BIBLIOGRAPHY:

• A bibliography is an alphabetical list of sources (articles from books, newspapers, magazines, journals, web sites, interviews, non-print material, etc.) you use for researching a topic.
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• NOTE: Bibliographies are also referred to as "References" or "Works Cited." A bibliography usually includes only the citation information for sources – called the bibliographic data: the author, title, publisher, date, etc.

• An annotated bibliography adds to the basic citation by including descriptive and evaluative information regarding the cited work.

• The brief notes/commentary/annotation (about 200 – 250 words for each source) provides the reader with critical judgments about the source, including its relevancy, accuracy, and quality. The annotation attempts to give enough critical information to the reader to provide a foundation for further research.

IV. PURPOSE OF THE ANNOTATED BIBLIOGRPAHY:
• Writing an annotated bibliography is excellent preparation for the research essay. Collecting sources for a bibliography is useful, of course, but when you have to write annotations for each source, you’re forced to read each source more carefully. That’s when you begin to read more critically instead of just collecting information.

• In addition, writing an annotated bibliography can help you gain a good idea about what is being said about your topic. By reading a variety of sources on a topic, you’ll start to see what the issues are in the literary work, what people say about the text, and you’ll then be able to develop your own ideas, thus helping you formulate a thesis.

• The annotated bibliography is a comprehensive listing of sources. Its purposes are to

 Illustrate the scope and quality of the research the student has done,
 Review the literature that"s published on a particular subject,
 Provide the reader with supplementary, illustrative, or alternative sources,  Allow the reader to see if a particular source was consulted. and  Place the research in an historical context.

V. ABSTRACTS VS ANNOTATATIONS:

• Abstracts are descriptive summaries of the main points of a work, often found at the beginning of scholarly journal articles. Many online databases provide abstracts for the articles indexed in the database.

• Annotations are critical and descriptive summaries that show the author"s point of view, clarity, appropriateness of expression, and authority.

VI. WRITING THE ANNOTATED BIBLIOGRAPHY:

For the Annotated Bibliography assignment, you should

• Conduct a search to locate and gather information for your paper that contains useful information on your narrowed topic;

• Decide what types of sources (books, articles, Internet sources, interviews, newspapers, and non-print materials) will be included;

• Evaluate these sources by reading them and noting your findings;

• Once your final sources have been selected, you should give full citation data according to MLA format. You should acknowledge the bibliographic data: the author, title, publisher, date, etc. Details for formatting annotations are posted in Canvas: "How to Prepare the Annotated Bibliography."

VII. ASSIGNMENT
• This "essay" will be, in a sense, a VERY SHORT critical analysis of FOUR SOURCES that discuss the novel or the author or both. These are sources that you might want to use in writing your research essay. Do not write about or include sources that relate to the movie or other medium. The assignment should be about the novel. All four sources must be scholarly and professional sources from databases or approved literary criticisms.
• For this annotated bibliography assignment, DO NOT USE THE NOVEL – it is the primary source, and while you’ll use it, certainly, in the research essay itself, it is not an article or a book or an interview that discusses the novel (or author).

• Keep in mind that for the research essay itself, a total of five sources will be required:
three sources must be scholarly articles (or books); one will be the novel itself, and the other one is your choice – and it must be a credible and an authoritative source.

 To learn the differences between WEB SITES and DATABASES, please see the handout in Canvas: "How to Tell the Difference Between a Web Site and a Database.")

 Follow strict MLA format (Times New Roman 12 font, double-spacing, pagination, heading, etc.).

 Work seriously on your research project, leading up to finding sources that you believe you could use for the research essay. From these sources, choose the best four sources. You"re not signing any contracts that these sources will indeed be part of the research paper, ultimately, but I encourage you to approach them seriously – the more likely that they will be useful in this paper, the more likely this assignment will help you in the writing of that paper.

 Visit the college library. Feel free to ask the librarians for help – take your questions and the assignment handout with you (or email or telephone them). Remember that you can visit online, telephone, or walk into the library.

VIII. HOW TO WRITE THE ANNOTATED BIBLIOGRPAHY

THE ANNOTATION FOR EACH SOURCE INCLUDES THREE PARTS:

1. CITATION FOR THE SOURCE
Follow the rules in the handout "How to Prepare the Annotated Bibliography.”

2. SUMMARY OF THE SOURCE

• What are the main points of the article? What topics are covered? If someone asks what this article is about, what would you say?

• For the summary, you should provide the title and author of the article in the very first sentence. Please use this file; it"s excellent: "How to Write a Summary for the Annotated Bibliography Assignment."

• NOTE: Use your own words to explain what you"ve found. Direct quotations should not be used in this part. Of course, if you use ideas from another source, you must provide in-text citations to acknowledge them.

3. ASSESSMENT OF THE SOURCE
After summarizing the source, you should go on to evaluate it by answering the following t wo questions:
1. How does this source compare with the other three sources in your bibliography? What does it offer that the others do not?

2. What about the source"s reliability and accuracy? (Is it trustworthy, dependable, and correct – why?)

3. OTHER: (Optional)
• Author’s background/authority/academic credentials
• The intended audience
• Value – the significance – of the article under consideration
• Any significant special features of the work (glossary, appendices, good index)
• Your own brief impression of the work.

IX. DATABASES AND ONLINE LITEARY CRITICISMS

• Look at journals and other articles that you can access through library databases, such as the following:

Academic Search Complete,
DOAJ: Languages and Literatures,
GaleNet, Literary Index,
Humanities Index
ProQuest
Essay and General Literature Index JSTOR

• DO NOT USE
Encyclopedias,
Online reading forums,
Book club postings,
Book club discussions,
Online posting to non-scholarly forums,
Posts,
Reviews,
Clubs (including Amazon, Barnes and Nobel, or other book clubs or forums),
Online literary histories (Cliff Notes, Spark Notes, Wikipedia, 123HelpMe, Gradesaver.com, or similar sites, Online discussion groups,
Magill"s Masterplots,
Moulton"s Library of Literary Criticism, Contemporary Literary Criticism (CLC), e-Notes,
Summaries,
Other so-called "analysis."

IF YOU CAN"T DETERMINE A SCHOLARLY SOURCE OR A DATABASE,
PLEASE CONTACT THE COLLEGE LIBRARIAN .

• Essay #2 will focus on how you read and interpret modern, conventional criticism from scholarly and professional sources – don"t get caught with your pants down!

X. RESOURCES FOR HELP
• Databases Vs. Web Sites
• How to Evaluate a Source (two files)
• How to Prepare the Annotated Bibliography Assignment
• How to Write the Summary Paragraph for the Annotated Bibliography • MLA Format: Quick Reference
• Help Guide: Searching for Online Criticisms
• Sample Annotated Bibliography

XI. NOTE ABOUT THE USE OF WIKIPEDIA IN COLLEGE-LEVEL RESEARCH: see Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales on PBS News Hour:

I don"t think at a college level it makes sense to cite any encyclopedia in an academic paper. That"s just not what an encyclopedia"s role is in the research process. Maybe if you"re in junior high, you know? If some kid out there is twelve years old and they wrote something and they put in a footnote, we should be thrilled, right? That"s his first start on the idea of crediting other people with ideas and things like that, but at the university level? No, it"s a bit junior high to cite an encyclopedia.

XII. SAMPLE ANNOTATED BIBLIOGRAPHY
The following sample is an annotated bibliography for a sociology class. The title for the paper is a working title – what the student thinks the actual title of the research essay will be. Keep in mind that there is just one source in this sample – and Essay #2 calls for four sources. Also, remember that the assignment should be double-spaced.




Jones 1
James Jones
Linda Rosenkranz
English 1302, CRN 12345
20 April 2025
The Disappearance of Traditional Families: An Annotated Bibliography Working Thesis Statement for Your Research Essay:
(Type your working thesis sentence here.)


Part I: Citation for Source
Waite, Linda J., Frances Kobrin, and Christina Witsberg. "Non-family Living and the Erosion of Traditional Family Orientations Among Young Adults." American Sociological Review 51 (2014): 541-554. http://www.amsociologicalreview.org.

Part II: Summary of Source
The authors, researchers at Rand Corporation and Brown University, used data from the National Longitudinal Surveys of Young Women and Young Men to test their hypothesis that non-family living by young adults changes their attitudes, values, plans, and expectations and moves them away from their beliefs in traditional sex roles. Their findings were strongly supported in young women, while the effects were fewer in studies of young men. Increasing the time away from parents before marrying increased individualism, self-sufficiency, and changes in attitudes about families.

Part III: Assessment of Source
1. This source differs a great deal from the article by Dr. John Williams. In fact, of all four sources, I regard this article as the most important at this time because in addition to major findings, there is good, background information about the clinical studies that generated the data. This article clearly illustrates the authors’ findings from their study but does not explore the implications, leaving the reader with some unanswered questions.

2. The source is reliable. Both studies occurred within the last three years, and the researchers have been active in clinical research for more than twenty years. This is a scholarly source written by three researchers who work in both the public and private sectors (university and corporate) whose research is funded by a government grant. Doctors Waite, Kobrin, and Witsburg are recognized as leading sociologists in the United States. In addition, they have published three other papers about similar studies in the past two years.

3. Other: Sociologists are the intended audience. The reading difficulty, while scholarly, is appropriate for students in a college sociology class. This source includes technical terms and other professional language suitable for sociologists.




NOTE: There is just one source above in the sample annotated bibliography; however, in your Essay #2, you will use four sources.

XIII. Begin early – things generally take longer than we expect.

Now, I"ve referred to this as an "assignment," not as an "essay" because I"d like you to view this not as a connected essay but more as annotated notes of the ideas you"ve discovered from the research. Overall, my goal for this assignment is to encourage you to practice with the ideas for your research essay.

XIV. Here"s how I"ll grade the annotated bibliography:

1. If you compose a correct document, including MLA format, and cover both areas (summary and assessment – including the two questions in the assessment) – for each of the four sources, you will receive a grade of "90" for this assignment. If you do a very good job of providing correct and accurate information about these areas, the score can go to a "100."

2. If you don"t cover all areas or if you discuss fewer than four sources, the score will be reduced by 10 points each for each nonexistent source or each nonexistent area.

3. If your work is not substantive, not clear, or shows little effort (including finding the best credible and authoritative sources), you will earn anywhere from an "F" (50) to a 5, depending on the degree of problem areas.

4. If you do not submit the assignment, or if it is confusing, lacks focus, or shows little or no understanding of the assignment topic, the grade will be a zero (0).

XV. Turnitin: When you finish writing the assignment, send the final draft to Turnitin where an
Originality Report will be generated. Download the report to your computer. Look it over, make changes if you want, and when you are satisfied with your paper, you should upload it as an attachment to the Assignments tool, along with the Originality Report. You will upload two files (and a third optional file is a copy of the tutor’s comments if applicable). No Originality Report = zero on the assignment.

XVI. HCC Tutoring: You are encouraged but not required to submit a draft of your assignment to the tutors. Five extra points will be awarded if you (1) provide a copy of the tutor"s comments when you upload your paper and (2) your essay shows proof of the tutor’s help. Please do not send the tutors" comments to me if your paper does not show evidence of their help. (Be sure to check the tutors" home page to determine the turn-around time.)

XVII. Late Paper Policy: Work that is submitted 1-7 calendar days late will be penalized 10 points. Assignments 8-14 days late will lose 20 points. No work is accepted after 14 days.

XVII. About the Assignment:
1. Name your file based on the following: 2 Essay Jeff Cruz
2. Create your own title for the paper – make sure it’s not too general. It should let readers know the focus and direction of your research essay; choose a title that you want to use in the actual research essay.
3. Be sure to proofread. Use the Spell Check.

IMPORTANT:

The answers in your assignment should be numbered to match the corresponding questions:

Part I: Citation for the Source
Part II: Summary of the Source
Part III: Assessment of the Source

1. How does the source compare specifically with the other three sources in your bibliography? What does it offer specifically that the others do not, or why do you regard it as more important right now?
2. What about its reliability and accuracy for a particular audience?
3. Other (optional).
See the Grading Profile to learn exactly how your paper will be graded.
XVIII. Internet Resources:
How to Prepare An Annotated Bibliography: www.library.cornell.edu/okuref/research/skill28.htm

Owl at Purdue: http://owl.english.purdue.edu/handouts/general/gl_annotatedbib.html

Annotated Bibliography: St. Cloud University: http://leo.stcloudstate.edu/acadwrite/annotated.html

Writing An Annotated Bibliography: http://www.utoronto.ca/writing/annotatebib.html

(Parts of this document have been adapted with permission from the Reference Department; Instruction, Research, and Information Services (IRIS); Cornell University Library, Ithaca, New York.)