So today I finished creating my annotated bibliography. It sounds like a lot of work, and it is when you do it incorrectly. Like me. Ideally you would create the document as you read your sources. I began the bibliography after reading all the sources. For a regular bibliography this is not a big deal. For an annotated bibliography, pretty big deal. Because the main difference between a regular bibliography and an annotated one is that an annotated bibliography has paragraphs. Paragraphs that summarize the work and convey the works importance to your research.
Yeah. I hate myself for messing this up. I pretty much had to go through and re-read about a quarter of each of these books. It hurt my soul. Not because the books are unenjoyable, but because for the most part they are super dry. So they're kind of unenjoyable. No one's problem but my one. And I own up to it. But, it does help reinforce some pretty important information.
The greatest minds of the Scientific Revolution were important to every aspect of science. Robert Boyle is one of those. He made incredibly important discoveries in medicine and his theories helped advance medicine as a whole. While William Harvey discovered the circulatory system, Boyle theorized the importance of air, particularly with his corpuscular theory. The corpuscular theory is kind of complex, if only because every way I've seen it defined is in an academic or 17th century style. Neither one of these make for easy learning. But the theory basically says that there are particles within the air and they can affect us. How this actually works, I'm still trying to figure out. I have a book that will hopefully explain it better, but I'm not sure that it will fully apply to medicine. Or medicinal cannibalism.
A lot of stuff in research is super dry, I agree. But once you're writing your research paper and feel super prepared because you read those books, you'll be glad you read those books.
ReplyDeleteWhy did you have to create an annotated bibliography and not a regular bibliography? What portions of an annotated bibliography were necessary for your project?
My project supervisor actually wanted me to use an annotated bibliography because this project will incorporate so much reading. She said that by doing this, it will be easier to remember what information I found important and why.
DeleteMy bibliography also included specific page references for things that I found to be useful. This will allow me to refer back to areas that would benefit my research overall without having to reread the entire book each time. Hopefully.
But for the project overall, simply writing the paragraphs was the important part of the bibliography. It really allows me to focus in on the relevant material.
Although it hurt your soul, I think the learning process of the annotated bibliography will prove invaluable for future academic inquiry!
ReplyDeleteHow are you doing with the challenges of the antiquated language? Do you have supportive reference materials to assist in your comprehension of the more complex texts?
Embarrassingly enough, the antiquated language isn't that strange to me. I went through a phase in elementary school where I wrote in olde english (with modern spelling) because my mom and I were reading Shakespeare together. My entire family mocked me for a while.
DeleteJust in case though, I got what I think is an Elizabethan dictionary. I haven't needed to utilize quite yet, though that time is likely approaching.