The Key Differences Between Review Of Literature And An Annotated Bibliography

By Author: Donna Santos
Total Articles: 81
Comment this article

Getting mad since you do not know what is the purpose of writing literature analysis and an annotated bibliography?

Many people confuse review of literature with annotated bibliographies. The following article states the main differences between the two. They both are defined differently and are used for different purposes. Though both of them are quite different from each other, they can be sometimes mutually exclusive.

Difference in Definition:

Literature Review:

Speaking generally, it is a description of all the relevant information on a certain area of a subject. The word literature consists of all the sources of reliable information you can get on your subject: books, journal articles, newspaper articles, historical records, government reports, theses and dissertations, etc. All these sources of information contribute in the assessment.

Annotated bibliography:

Whereas, on the other hand, it is usually thought of as an alphabetical ...
... listing, at the end of a written work, of all the references the author used in his work. It is a list of all the citations to books, articles, websites, and documents from which material was extracted for the content of the analysis. Each citation is followed by a small description of the cited source. This description tells about the reliability and accuracy of the source. This description is known as the annotation. Therefore, it is the kinds of references that also contain description of the citations.

Difference in Purpose:

The purpose of writing it is to educate the audience about the topic of discussion. After reading it, the reader should know what questions have been answered by this review and what aspects have been covered. He should be up to date about the topic of discussion.

Footnotes, on the other hand, are a record of the useful sources of information which can be used again later for fulfilling some other research purpose. They tell from where the information was picked up. They also state the usefulness of the source. This list provides the reader with sound evidence of the data. He can refer to the source and confirm the information.

It is an analysis of all the information of a given subject. It contains a lot of research and information that comes from a lot of different sources. Information analyses are produced from this referencing style. Usually, it comes at the end of the written work.

So if you know how to do a literature review, you must also know how to prepare the annotated referencing style. In this kind of references, a researcher puts together all the sources that were referred for the review. Whereas, an information analysis is a narration of all the collected data information which was collected from the references listed in it.