Reference Lists and Bibliographies

Although both of these lists contain information about the published sources used in writing a paper, there is an important difference. Reference lists contain only the works cited and used by the writer in preparing the research paper. Bibliographies, on the other hand, may contain works that the writer has not used or read. Bibliographies, therefore, are appropriate in a research proposal, which is written before the research has been done. However, after the research has been completed, in the final project report, only the works actually used by the writer and cited in the paper will appear in the list of references.

Because of these differences between bibliographies and reference lists, the entries in a bibliography might not correspond to the citations in the body of the paper. Recall, however, that in a reference list, all entries must correspond to at least one citation in the body of a research paper. 

The Annotated Bibliography, which is a required part of your EDCI 590 proposal, is a special kind of bibliography. Like a list of references, it is formatted in APA style and contains entries providing information about published sources that you plan to use in your research. In addition, it also contains annotations. The annotations are brief notes about each resource listed that explain how the resource relates to the topic of your research proposal. Even if you have not read the resource completely, you can write a brief annotation after skimming through it.

Example of an entry in an Annotated Bibliography