Difference Between Annotated Bibliography and Literature Review

At some point in your college career, whether you attend WGU, WGU Indiana, or any other college, you are probably going to have to create an annotated bibliography as well as a literature review. Since both of these concern your references, it can be difficult to try and understand the difference between the two.


Validate Your Sources
The thing to keep in mind is that the annotated bibliography basically validates your sources. You will summarize the material briefly, but your main focus is to demonstrate why your sources are acceptable means of reference. You need to demonstrate that they are quality sources.

Validate Your Research
The literature review is almost the opposite of the annotated bibliography. Instead of proving that your sources are authentic and credible, the literature review proves that your research is warranted.

The layout of each of these is also different. While the annotated bibliography should be presented in whatever format you are directed to present it in (MLA, APA, etc.) the literature review is presented in order of importance as is relative to your research so that in most cases more than one citation is used per paragraph in comparison/contrast, cause/effect, or relational form. The reader should be able to place your literature review side by side with your actual research and be able to follow along both in the same order. Click the link for a great example of a side by side comparison of a literature review and an annotated bibliography.