Annotated Bibliography (Part 1 of the Semester-long “Big Picture” project)

For your Bibliography, you need to provide a collection of at least twenty (20) resources that are related to your “Big Question” identified for your semester project and discussed in your “Big Question” journal entry. You should draw upon these sources as you seek an answer to your question. You should identify these sources through your own research.

Your sources can include Web sites, books, movies, YouTube clips, online photo archives, songs, etc. For those sources that are available through the Internet, include a link to the Web page, video, song, etc. in addition to the title of the source and the name of the author.  For those sources that can’t be linked to on the Internet, you’ll need to provide the full MLA style citation for the source (see The Citation Machine (Links to an external site.) ).

The majority of the sources should be from scholarly Web sites including “.edu” domains, from the NVC library databases of scholarly/academic journals, and from otherwise reputable sources where the author can be known and the author’s credibility/authority on the subject can be verified.  If you use sources from the NVC library databases, make sure to include a “stable URL/Web address” or a “permalink” rather than copy/pasting the Web address from the browser.

Non scholarly Web sites should be kept to a minimum and only be used as a supplement to the scholarly ones in cases where the non-scholarly perspective is unique and compliments the other scholarly sources (for example, personal blogs, social media posts, popular culture artworks, memes, or personal interviews).  The summaries for these later types of sources should indicate the subjective and non-scholarly nature of these sources. 

Also, the nature of some topics will require the use of non-scholarly sources such a fictional movies, artworks, YouTube music videos, poetry, photographs, editorial cartoons, and other primary sources.  If YouTube videos are used, make sure to verify the credibility and authority of the source and describe the author’s authority/credibility in the summary.  For example, “TED Talks” videos are generally from credible sources.

Also, the majority of the sources should be drawn from the humanities:  history, philosophy, literature, comparative religion, language, art history and criticism, jurisprudence, and social sciences with a humanistic focus.  Scientific sources, including psychological and sociological ones, should be kept to a minimum and be used only as a compliment to the humanistic ones.

Each of your twenty (20) sources should also include a 1-2 sentence description of the general content of your source using your own words.  The more in-depth the summary is, the higher the grade will generally be.  Please number each entry.

So, your completed Bibliography will include 20 sources related to your “Big Question,” and each of these sources will be accompanied by a 1-2 sentence description.  Your presentation can be composed in Word or another word processing program and attached to your submitted assignment, or you can compose your bibliography offline and then copy/paste into Canvas when you are ready to submit the assignment.