Capital Punishment

Description of Assignment:

Preparation of an annotated bibliography

Instructions for Assignment:

In preparation for your Letter to the Governor (due the last week of the course and involves you requesting either the continuation or discontinuation of capital punishment in Ohio), you are to locate your five scholarly sources and create an annotated bibliography. For the Letter to the Governor, you will need to use four sources that support your position and one that is opposing your position.

WHAT IS AN ANNOTATED BIBLIOGRAPHY? An annotated bibliography is a list of citations to journal articles, books, and other documents. Each citation is followed by a brief (usually about 150 words) descriptive and evaluative paragraph, the annotation. The purpose of the annotation is to inform the reader of the relevance, accuracy, and quality of the sources cited.

ANNOTATIONS VS. ABSTRACTS:

Abstracts are the purely descriptive summaries often found at the beginning of scholarly journal articles or in periodical indexes. Annotations are descriptive and critical; they expose the author’s point of view, clarity and appropriateness of expression, and authority. You will use the CARS (Credibility, Accuracy, Reasonableness, and Support) analysis we used in week 1 as a method to evaluate each of your sources. A reminder on the CARS guidelines can be found here.

THE PROCESS

Locate appropriate references. To do this, go to the Library Homepage (library.msj.edu) and click on the tab that says Research Help. Under that tab, choose the box on the left panel that says Library Tutorials. Under that tab you will find tutorials on how to search the Academic Search Complete database.
Cite the article or document using the appropriate style. You can use either APA or MLA format. For more information, please see Purdue’s Online Writing Lab (OWL) APA Style or MLA Style. Alternatively, go to the Library Homepage (library.msj.edu) and click on the tab that says Research Help. Under that tab, choose the box on the left panel that says Citing Your Sources. Under that tab you will find resources for both APA and MLA citation styles. Regardless of the citation style used, be sure you alphabetize the entries by the first word in the entry, which is typically the first author’s last name.
For each citation write a concise annotation that contains the following:
An overview of the reference
How this work relates to other references you have cited (if applicable)
How this work relates to your research project
A summarized CARS analysis of the source
Your assignment will be evaluated using the Annotated Bibliography Rubric.

***I AM AGAINST CAPITAL PUNISHMENT***