A bibliography is a list of works by other authors that is relevant to a book opr article and is usually listed at the bottom or at the end of the work. Bibliographies are extremely useful because they not only give credit to sources used in a particular paper or compilation; they also provide valuable information for the reader to use for further research on the same subject.

An annotated bibliography goes further and gives descriptions about how each source in the list is useful to an author in constructing a paper, argument or article. These descriptions are usually a few sentences long and make an ideal summary of each source as well as clearly indicating its' relevance to the subject at hand.

An annotated bibliography is a great way to properly attribute information to its proper original source, which helps reduce a major nuisance of a problem facing the world in the current information age, and that is plagiarism. The Internet is a really wonderful research tool that gives anybody access to numerous articles and research papers and information.

However it is too easy to cut and paste other peoples information in the process and present them as your own. Or to use other peoples ideas to develop your own without properly crediting your original source of inspiration. The long term effects of this on the quality of information available on the World Wide Web are clear. Less people will be willing to make their information available for fear of suffering the pain of their precious work being plagiarized. This will naturally have serious repercussions on the value of the net as the most useful research tool ever invented.

Promoting the use of bibliographies in web sites and especially a detailed annotated bibliography will go a long way in helping to curb or at least reduce this widespread problem.