What is an annotated bibliography?
Generally speaking, an annotated bibliography is a bibliography with some notes amounting to a few sentences. The bibliographic entry itself should be complete, much as the references are on the reference list I gave you. The two most troublesome entries for earth science tend to be papers in an edited volume and a paper in a volume that is part of a series. For a paper in an edited volume you need the author(s) and title of the paper and the editor(s), publisher, and title of the book. If the paper is in a volume that is part of a series (things like a paper in a DNAG volume, a state geological survey memoir, etc.), then in addition to the edited volume info you should add the series name and volume number.
As an example:
Lubetkin, L.K.C., and M.M. Clark, Late Quaternary activity along the Lone Pine Fault, eastern California, Geol. Soc. Am. Bull., 100 (5), 755-766, 1988.
Documents the geomorphology of scarps and the distribution of scarp height near Lone Pine, interpreting variations as the product of three separate earthquakes each producing about 1-2 m of vertical offset. Offset of an ancient channel of Lone Pine Creek and a younger debris flow reveals right-lateral slip in these events of 4-6 m. Dating of the fan indicates late Quaternary slip rates of about 0.4-1.3 mm/yr on the Lone Pine Fault and possibly 0.7-2.2 mm/yr across the Owens Valley Fault system.
What references do I include?
Include all the papers that you will take figures from for the field guide and all the papers you looked at that bear on your topics. This includes papers from the reference list! Don't leave them off simply because they were listed there--there was no annotation on the list I provided.
What is the purpose of the annotated bibliography?
There are a number of possible uses for the bibliography:
For this first cut, (1) and (2) are most important. For a bibliography accompanying the field trip materials, (3) is most important.
What should be in the notes?
You want to be terse and specific. Generic comments like "discusses this region," "explores the geological history" or repetitions of the title are not helpful. Tell what is special or important about the paper: "detailed maps of the core complex," "integrates geochemical, petrologic, and paleomagnetic constraints to reveal unusual aspects of this intrusion." If there is a controversy note where this paper fits in, e.g., "advocates more than 3000 km of displacement of Insular Superterrane from paleomagnetic observations of Cretaceous plutons." Editorializing is tricky: you often reveal more about your background than the paper you have read. In general you should err on the side of objectivity, but occasionally a brief comment can help the user: "a murky read," "a most convincing interpretation," "seems to presume their conclusions rather than allow them to come from their observations."
Of course the detail of comments will vary. Many journal articles have quite specific points that can be well summarized in the annotation (as for the example above). Books are harder; here again the guiding principle should reflect why you chose to read (parts of) the book at all: "provides a handy overview to the geologic history of the region from a dominantly stratigraphic perspective," "although lacking supporting detail, shows a fairly plausible overview of the evolution of the region useful in relating more detailed journal papers to the problems at hand," "provides a comprehensive bibliography to the literature on many points relating to the geochemistry of the region."
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Please send mail to cjones@terra.colorado.edu if you encounter any problems or have suggestions.
C. H. Jones | CIRES | Dept. of Geological Sciences | Univ. of Colorado at Boulder
Last modified at March 3, 2002 11:19 PM