Requirements from your syllabus for your annotated bibliography:

Summarize the major themes and findings on the subject from at least five (5) journal articles from scholarly sources. This installment should include a list of references containing a complete citation for each of the five articles you summarize plus full citations for five additional articles on the subject (which you do NOT have to summarize for this installment but which should be used in your final draft). Your problem statement should reference the five articles and clearly demonstrate that you have read all five articles and have found in each of them material that is important to the definition and analysis of your research question. 

Q: Why do I need to use scholarly journal articles?

A: Scholarly journal articles are written by experts in the field who can speak authoritatively on a topic because they have done the research (studies or tests). Then the articles are vetted by other experts in the field (their peers).

Image credit: http://undsci.berkeley.edu/images/us101/peerreview.gif

Step 1: Use your statement to determine your search terms. Your librarian's example is: South American countries with greater political participation among women have higher life expectancy and socioeconomic status. 

The terms in bold above ("South America" and "political participation" and women) will be used as search terms in the database.

Step 2: Go to the UNT Libraries home page, select Databases (circled in red below) on the left hand side of the blue box, select ProQuest Political Science (highlighted in yellow below) from the "Go Directly to" drop down menu and click Go. (If you are off campus you will be asked to log in with your EUID and Password.)

Step 3: From the ProQuest Political Science home page type "South America" and "political participation" (highlighted in yellow below) into the search box. Also, select the Peer reviewed checkbox (circled in red below) so you only pull up scholarly/peer reviewed articles. Then click the blue search button to the right. We are searching "South America" in quotes, this lets the database know you only want results with those 2 words back to back. Using the word and in between "South America" and "political participation" lets the database know you only want results that have both those phrases (but in any order.)

Step 4: The results page will give you over 300 results. You need to narrow your search to make it more specific to you your statement. Add the term and "women" (highlighted in yellow below) to the search box and click the Search button to the right. Since this needs to be a contemporary issue, you may also narrow by Publication date (circled in red below) to the last 10 years (for example). Depending on your topic you may need to broaden or narrow your search.

Step 5: If you are having trouble finding articles for your topic please contact your Political Science Librarian, you may just need to consider other search terms. There are several other databases to find scholarly/peer reviewed articles. Ask your librarian for suggestions or use the Additional Electronic Resources tab in this research guide for alternatives.

The Perdue Online Writing Lab has some excellent tips for writing and formatting an annotated bibliography. Specifically, they suggest the following:

• Summarize: Some annotations merely summarize the source. What are the main arguments? What is the point of this book or article? What topics are covered? If someone asked what this article/book is about, what would you say? The length of your annotations will determine how detailed your summary is. For more help, see our handout on paraphrasing sources.
• Assess: After summarizing a source, it may be helpful to evaluate it. Is it a useful source? How does it compare with other sources in your bibliography? Is the information reliable? Is this source biased or objective? What is the goal of this source?
• Reflect: Once you've summarized and assessed a source, you need to ask how it fits into your research. Was this source helpful to you? How does it help you shape your argument? How can you use this source in your research project? Has it changed how you think about your topic?