Suggestions for Writing Annotations 

 

 

 

 

Content – What is the resource about?  Is it relevant to your research?

 

Purpose – What is it for?  Why was the book or article written?

 

Usefulness – What does it do for your research?

 

Reliability – Is the information accurate?  Do other sources support the

 

conclusions? 

 

Authority – Is it written by someone who has the expertise to author the

 

information?  What are the author’s credentials?

 

Currency – Is it new?  Is it up-to-date for the topic?

 

Ease of use – Can a “real person” use this resource?  What is the reading level

 

of the resource? 

 

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Sample introducation

 

 

 

 

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Sample introduction, citations and annotations

 

 

Monday, February 18, 2008

Annotated Bibliography

 

 

 

Topic: The fashion industry and its influence on eating disorders and the self-image of different types of young women. 

 

 

 

            As a fashion design major I use fashion magazines to get ideas and inspiration, but I often find myself admiring the models and wondering what I can do to look more like them.  This is not only something I think about on occasion, but it is a major problem from many young women in today’s society.

I my paper I will look at how the fashion magazines influence young women in relation to their self-image.  I will take an in depth look into eating disorders and the effect the media, magazine in particular, has on young women.  Can we ever relieve our society of the perfect size 6 images?  How does being frail become in style?  I will try to take a close look at these questions and more.

            I will also look at the role race and ethnicity play in the “never too thin” phenomenon.  Do eating disorders discriminate?  Is ok for black and Hispanic women to have curves and not white and Asian women?  Ultimately, why does this matter?  All in all I will be discussing the way fashion magazines play a large role promoting the “thin is in” image and how it effects different types of women and their responses to eating disorders.

 

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Field, Alison E. "Media Influence on Self-Image: the Real Fashion Emergency." Healthy Weight Journal 14 (2000): 88. Academic Search Premier. Dominican University Library, River Forest, IL. 14 Mar. 2006. <http://web.ebscohost.com>

 

 

 

This is a brief but informative article on the influence of fashion magazines and the media have on young girls.  It focuses on the frequency of uses and how it directly affects young women’s weight control habits.  It contains many relevant statistics and facts.  The article is from a credible journal that was released in late 2000, so the information is fairly recent.  This article uses rather simple language, which could easily be understood by someone at the high school level.  The author, Alison E. Field is an Assistant Professor at Harvard Medical School and does research on the causes and consequences of overweight and disordered eating among children, adolescents, and adult women.  For these reasons I believe that her article is very credible.  I used Academic Search Premier to find this article using the key term “eating disorders”.  Many of the stats would be very useful in my paper but other than the statistics the article is not much use to me.  The information the article provides me with statistical proof of my thesis.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Thomsen, Steven R, J. Kelly McCoy, and Marleen Williams. “Internalizing the Impossible: Anorexic Outpatients’ Experiences With Women’s Beauty and Fashion Magazines.” Eating Disorders 9 (2001):

 

 

 

This article is one of the most informative articles I have read regarding my topic.  The article summarizes the study that took place and the outcome of the study.  28 outpatients at an eating-disorder treatment facility between the ages of 18-25 were interviewed regarding the use of fashion magazines and the influence the magazines had on their lives.  The article also gives a great deal of background information on fashion magazines and eating disorders.  This article is written at the university level.  I really enjoyed reading the personal quotes from the young women and I got an inside look into the minds of the girls that are influenced by the disorders like anorexia and bulimia.  The authors provide many references that I will look into further. I found this article using Academic Search Premier at Dominican.  When researching the credentials for the authors, I found nothing, however their cover page of the article indicates that the authors were from Brigham Young University.  Published in 2001, the article is fairly recent and I believe that it is up-to-date for this information.  This is also coming from a journal called Eating Disorders, which leads me to be that this article must be credible considering it is part of a journal completely devoted to eating disorders.

 

 

 

 

 

Jones, April M., and Justin T. Buckingham. "Self-Esteem as a Moderator of the Effect of Social Comparison on Women's Body Image." Journal of Social and Clinical Psychology 24 (2005): 1164-1124. ProQuest. Dominican University Library, River Forest. 21 Mar. 2006 <http://web.proquest.com>

 

 

 

Geared towards a graduate or professional audience, this article was difficult to read.  There was a study done on what beauty is and how it affects self-esteem of women.  The test was done in which twenty females were photographed and rated by a sample of college students according to their attractiveness on a scale of 1-5.  They were then split into three groups to complete different questionnaires regarding self-esteem and self-worth.  I had a difficult time understanding the results of the study, however, I believe that some of the information may be useful for my paper, assuming I comprehend the information correctly with a more detailed reading of the article.  This article also has an extensive list of references.  I found this article using Proquest at Dominican.  I could not find the credentials of the authors, but it comes from a reliable and highly regarded journal.  Written in December of 2005 this article is very recent and up to date.

 

 

 

 

 

Rose, Tracey. "Size Wars." Off Our Backs 34 (2004): 30-31. Academic Search Premier. Dominican University Library, River Forest. 22 Mar. 2006 <http://web.ebscohost.com>

 

 

 

This article was written by an African dancer who has performed many shows not only in her native South Africa, but also in America.  She speaks about how she had to deal with her weight even as a young girl.  She, unlike most Caucasian women, she was discriminated against because she was a young black woman who was naturally very skinny.  She says that luckily oversized clothing was in style and she was able to get away with her thin stature.  She talks about how black women are supposed to have curves and about how eating disorders are typically associated with white women.  She also questions whether her concern with her size is due to her want to impress men or about her own health and beauty.  This is a nice look into the mind of a small black woman, however I do not find it very relevant to my research.  She is also not the most credible source when it comes to eating disorders.  It is a good article, but not necessarily good for my paper. This was written for the magazine Off Our Backs, which I have never heard of. This was written at a very basic reading level.  This article was published in November of 2004 thus quite recent.  I found this article using Academic Search Premier.  I believe that the information is reliable because it is mostly the authors experiences, but it not something that may come into play for my research paper.

 

 

 

Seid, Roberta Pollack. Never Too Thin: Why Are Women At War with Their Bodies. New York: Prentice Hall P, 1989.

 

 

This is a revised version of the original published in 1945, Never Too Thin: Why Women are at war with their bodies.  In the very opening of the book, Seid says that she wrote the book for a “general audience, not for academics” (viii), but I found much of the information very useful for my research paper.  Chapter 12, Why Thin is Never Thin Enough, was especially relevant.  It talked about women’s need to be thinner and why women are constantly at war with their bodies. There are also many sections throughout the book that speak of the influences of fashion magazines.  Seid is a historian and has over fifty pages of notes, which tell me that she is credible and did her fair share of research in order to obtain the correct information.  This book was written in 1989, so it is not very recent, but is still useful for historical information.  I would use her notes as references to other good books, but they are all written before 1989 and I feel that my topics would be better supported with more recent information.  I found this book through the help of the Dominican Library website.  I would definitely use some of the information from this booking my paper even though it is a little older than some of the other things I found.

 

 

 

Sypeck, Mia Foley, James J. Gray, and Anthony H. Ahrens. "No Longer Just a Pretty Face: Fashion Magazines' Depictions of Ideal Female Beauty From 1959 to 1999." International Journal of Eating Disorders 36 (2004): 342-347. Academic Search Premier. Dominican University Library, River Forest, IL.  20 Mar. 2006 <http://web.ebscohost.com>

 

 

This is great article that examines that way the ideal feminine body image has changed over the years.  The size rating were taken form the models of a specific decade and compare to the general population.  It also examines how fashion magazines have portrayed the ideal body weight.  This is a very good source for the transition of the ideal body, but not very good for race considering it doesn’t mention it.  This article comes from the International Journal of Eating Disorders and I consider that a credible source.  I found this article using Academic Search Premier at Dominican.   I was unable to find any information on the authors other than they are from the Department of Psychology at the American University in Washington D.C.  This article was written in 2004 and concentrates on the 1960s to the 1990s. The language is on the university level.  The study that was being explained was not written in a language that is over a university level but defiantly not a high school level.  This article has a good amount of useful information that I will use to support my thesis in my paper.

 

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 Additional examples of annotations and citations:

 

 

 

 

 

“How we Learn” MemoryLifter. 11 Oct. 2005.  25 Oct. 2005

 

<http://www.memorylifter.com/learning/learning-tools.html>

 

 

 

While this website has some interesting information about memory and learning, it is a commercial site with the goal of promoting its product, the MemoryLifter.  Despite a couple of good diagrams and some useful information, the majority of the site is dedicated to the products they provide.  There is a link for contacting the site creators but it doesn’t have any information other than a phone number and email address.  There is no page with “About Us” information and no references are provided for the information on memory and learning.  I would not use this site in my research paper unless I could corroborate the information with another more trustworthy source. 

 

 

 

I accessed this resource through Google.com.  The search terms I used were memory and learning tools. 

 

 

 

 

 

Levin, Daniel T., Daniel J. Simons; and Bonnie L. Angelone. “Memory for centrally

 

attended changing objects in an incidental real-world change detection

 

paradigm.” British Journal of Psychology. 93.3 (2002), 289-302.  Social Sciences

 

FullText.  W. H. Wilson.  Dominican University Library, River

 

Forest, IL.  25 Oct. 2005.  <http://ezproxy.dom.edu/login?url=http://vnweb.hwwilsonweb.com/hww/jumpstart.jhtml?prod=OMNI>

 

 

 

This article discusses three experiments that were conducted by the authors exploring the role of change blindness as it occurs with attended objects – that is, the object they were paying attention to.  The article includes discussion of the roles of memory and visual perception on detecting change in a scene, photographic lineup, and even with a conversation partner.  Written for a scholarly audience, the article presents some difficulty but, overall, is manageable for the general educated person.   The authors, affiliated with Kent State University and Harvard University, present the research in terms of each experiment conducted, their methodology, findings, discussion and results.  A literature review is provided, as well as an extensive bibliography.  The summary and general discussion provided a useful overview of the conclusions drawn by the authors and could be used in the research paper to support a conclusion. 

 

 

 

I found this article through the Social Science Fulltext database.  I searched using the keywords visual perception and memory. 

 

 

 

 

 

Squire, Larry R. and Eric R. Kandel.  Memory: From Mind to Molecules.  New York:

 

Scientific American Library, 1999. 

 

 

 

Geared for a broad audience with an interest in science but nonscientific backgrounds, this book provides a “rudimentary background” for the biology and cognitive psychology involved in studies of memory.  The authors intended this book to be an overview of what is currently happening in the scholarship and research in psychology and neuroscience.  The text is peppered with illustrations, graphs, charts and models to illustrate the authors’ points and contains an extensive bibliography as well as a comprehensive index.  The authors’ credentials include a PhD. for Larry R. Squire, a professor of Psychiatry, Neurosciences, and Psychology and an M.D. for Eric R. Kandel, founder of the Center for Neurobiology and Behavior at Columbia University in New York.  Topics include: “molecules for short-term memory” and “priming, perceptual learning, and emotional learning.”  Chapters of this book may be helpful in writing my research paper for providing background information on perception and scientific explanations of how memory works. 

 

 

 

I found this book in the Dominican University online catalog.  I searched for the term memory in the Title field and sorted the results by most recently published.  I found a couple of books that looked good in the catalog but this one was the most useful once I got to the shelf. 

 

 

 

 

The  september 11 news website included events  and timelines about what happend after 911 and personal accounts.  To inform people of all the details that  occured during that time, some information is revelant some is not. It was moderatly useful despite some information that wasn't revelant. the author is not really credible there is no information on him.