What is an Annotated Bibliography? As you develop a working thesis for your final paper and begin to collect different pieces of evidence, you will soon find yourself needing some sort of system for keeping track of everything. The system discussed this week is an annotated bibliography, which is a list of sources on a particular topic that includes a brief summary of what each source is about. Here is an example of an entry from an annotated bibliography in Turabian style: Parsons, Matt. “Protecting Children on the Electronic Frontier: A Law Enforcement Challenge.” FBI Law Enforcement Bulletin 69.10 (2000): 22-26. Parsons is an FBI agent specializing in cyber security.  This article is about an educational program used by the U.S. Navy to educate people in the Navy and their families about some of the things that are potentially dangerous to children about the Internet. Parsons says that the educational program has been effective. Annotated bibliography entries have two parts. The top of the entry is the citation itself. It is the part that starts “Parsons, Matt’” and that lists information like the name of the writer, title of the publication, the date of publication, and other publishing information. The second part of the entry is the summary of the evidence being cited. A good annotated bibliography summary provides enough information in a sentence or two to help you and others understand what the research is about in a neutral and non-opinionated way.  They are an example of this sort of very brief, “just the facts” sort of summary. The most important goal of your brief summary is to help you, colleagues, and other potential readers get an idea about the subject of the particular piece of evidence. Summaries can be challenging to write, especially when you are trying to write them about longer and more complicated sources of research. Keep these guidelines in mind as you write your own summaries: · Keep your summary short. Good summaries for annotated bibliographies are not “complete” summaries; rather, they provide the highlights of the evidence in as brief and concise a manner as possible, no more than a few sentences. · Don’t quote from what you are summarizing. Summaries will be more useful to you and your colleagues if you write them in your own words. Instead of quoting directly what you think is the point of the piece of evidence, try to paraphrase it. · Don’t “cut and paste” from database abstracts. Many of the periodical indexes that are available as part of the library’s database include abstracts of articles. Do no “cut” this abstract material and then “paste” it into your own annotated bibliography. For one thing, this is plagiarism. Second, “cutting and pasting” from the abstract defeats one of the purposes of writing summaries and creating an annotated bibliography in the first place, which is to help you understand and explain your research, and identifying how each publication is to be used in your paper. Differ.

1. What is an Annotated Bibliography?
As you develop a working thesis for your final paper and begin
to collect different pieces of evidence, you will soon find
yourself needing some sort of system for keeping track of
everything.
The system discussed this week is an annotated bibliography,
which is a list of sources on a particular topic that includes a
brief summary of what each source is about.
Here is an example of an entry from an annotated bibliography
in Turabian style:
Parsons, Matt. “Protecting Children on the Electronic
Frontier: A Law Enforcement Challenge.” FBI Law
Enforcement Bulletin 69.10 (2000): 22-26.
Parsons is an FBI agent specializing in cyber security. This
article is about an educational program used by the U.S. Navy
to educate people in the Navy and their families about some of
the things that are potentially dangerous to children about the
Internet. Parsons says that the educational program has been
effective.
Annotated bibliography entries have two parts. The top of the
entry is the citation itself. It is the part that starts “Parsons,
Matt’” and that lists information like the name of the writer,
title of the publication, the date of publication, and other
publishing information.
The second part of the entry is the summary of the evidence
being cited. A good annotated bibliography summary provides
enough information in a sentence or two to help you and others

2. understand what the research is about in a neutral and non-
opinionated way. They are an example of this sort of very
brief,
“just the facts” sort of summary. The most important goal of
your brief summary is to help you, colleagues, and other
potential readers get an idea about the subject of the particular
piece of evidence.
Summaries can be challenging to write, especially when you are
trying to write them about longer and more complicated sources
of research. Keep these guidelines in mind as you write your
own summaries:
· Keep your summary short. Good summaries for annotated
bibliographies are not “complete” summaries; rather, they
provide the highlights of the evidence in as brief and concise a
manner as possible, no more than a few sentences.
· Don’t quote from what you are summarizing. Summaries will
be more useful to you and your colleagues if you write them in
your own words. Instead of quoting directly what you think is
the point of the piece of evidence, try to paraphrase it.
· Don’t “cut and paste” from database abstracts. Many of the
periodical indexes that are available as part of the library’s
database include abstracts of articles. Do no “cut” this abstract
material and then “paste” it into your own annotated
bibliography. For one thing, this is plagiarism. Second, “cutting
and pasting” from the abstract defeats one of the purposes of
writing summaries and creating an annotated bibliography in the
first place, which is to help you understand and explain your
research, and identifying how each publication is to be used in
your paper.
Different writers will inevitably write slightly different
summaries of the same evidence. Some differences between
different writers’ summaries of the same piece of evidence
result from different interpretations of what it important in the
research; there’s nothing wrong with that. However, two

3. summaries from different writers should both provide a similar
summary. In other words, it is not acceptable when the
difference of interpretation is the result of a lack of
understanding of the evidence.
Why Write Annotated Bibliographies?
An annotated bibliography is an excellent way to keep track of
the research you gather for your paper. Make no mistake about
it— it is extremely important that you keep track of all of your
evidence for your research paper, and that you keep track of it
from the beginning of the process of research writing.
There’s nothing more frustrating than finding an excellent
article or book chapter you are excited about incorporating into
your research project, only to realize you have forgotten where
you found the article or book chapter in the first place. This is
extremely frustrating, and it’s easily avoided by doing
something
like writing an annotated bibliography.
You could use other methods for keeping track of your research.
For example, you could use note cards and write down the
source information as a proper citation, then write down the
information about the source that is important. If the material
you know you want to use from a certain source is short enough,
you might even write a direct quote, which is where you write
down word for word what the source says exactly as it is
written. At other times, you can write a paraphrase, which is
where you write down what the source means using your own
words.
While note cards and other methods have their advantages,
annotated bibliographies are an extremely useful tool for
keeping track of your research.

4. An annotated bibliography:
· Centralizes your research into one document that you can keep
track of both as a print-out of a word-processed file and as a
file you save electronically.
· It also gives you the space to start writing and thinking a bit
about how some of your research might fit into your project.
Consider these two sample entries from an annotated
bibliography from a research project on
pharmaceutical advertising:
Siegel, Marc. “Fighting the Drug (ad) Wars.” The Nation, 17
June 2002: 21.
Siegel, who is a doctor himself, writes about how drug
advertising has undermined the communication between doctors
and patients. He says that drug ads have driven up the costs of
prescription drugs, particularly big-selling drugs like those for
cholesterol. This would support my hypothesis that the media is
paid by the pharmaceutical companies.
Wechsler, Jill. “Minority Docs See DTC Ads as Way to Address
‘Race Gap.’” Pharmaceutical Executive, WilsonSelect Database.
Eastern Michigan University Halle Library, May 2002: 32, 34.
This article is about a study that said that African-American
doctors saw advertising of prescription drugs as a way of
educating their patients. The ads are useful for my research
because they talk about diseases that affect African-Americans.
Even from the limited amount of information available in these
entries, it’s clear that a relationship between these articles
exists. Both are similar articles about how the doctor/patient
relationship is affected by drug advertising. But both are also
different. The first article is from the newspaper The Nation,
which is in many ways similar to an academic journal and which
is also known for its liberal

5. views. The second article is from a trade journal (also similar to
academic journals in many ways) that obviously is an advocate
for the pharmaceutical industry.
In other words, in the process of compiling an annotated
bibliography, you are doing more than keeping track of your
research. You are starting to make some comparisons and
beginning to see some relationships between your evidence, a
process that will become increasingly important as you gather
more research and work your way through the different
exercises that lead to the research project.
How many sources do I need?
Inevitably, students in research-writing classes always ask how
many sources they need in their research projects. In one sense,
“how many sources do I need?” is a utilitarian question, one
usually attached to a student’s exploration of what it will take
to get a particular grade. Considered more abstractly, this
question is also an effort to explore the scope of a research
project. Like a certain page or word count requirement, the
question “how many sources do I need?” is an effort to get a
handle on the scope of the research project assignment.
But ultimately, there is no right or wrong answer to this
question. Longer research projects tend to have evidence from
more different sources than shorter projects, but there is no cut-
and-dry formula where “X” number of pages will equal “Y”
number of sources.
However, an annotated bibliography should contain
significantly more entries than you intend or expect to include
in your research project. For example, if you think you will
need or if your instructor requires you to have research from
about seven different sources, you should probably have about
15 different

6. entries on your annotated bibliography.
The reasons you need to find twice as many sources as you are
likely to use is that you want to find and use the best research
you can reasonably find, not the first pieces of research you can
find. Usually, researchers have to look at a lot more information
than they would ever include in a research writing project to
begin making judgments about their research. And, by far the
worst thing you can do in your research is to stop right after
you have found the number of sources required by the instructor
for your project.
Questions to ask while writing and researching
· Would you classify the material as a primary or a secondary
source? Does the research seem to be difficult to categorize this
way? (For more information on primary and secondary sources,
see Chapter 1, “Thinking Critically About Research” and the
section “Primary versus Secondary Research”).
· Is the research from a scholarly or a non-scholarly
publication? Does the research seem difficult to categorize this
way?
· Is the research from the Internet—a web page, a newsgroup,
an email message, etc.? Remember: while Internet research is
not necessarily “bad” research, you do need to be more careful
in evaluating the credibility of Internet-based sources. (For
more information on evaluating Internet research, see Chapter
1, “Thinking Critically About Research,” and the sections “The
Internet: The Researcher’s Challenge” and “Evaluating the
Quality and Credibility of Your Research.”
· Do you know who wrote the material you are including in your
annotated bibliography? What qualifications does the writer
have?
· Why do you think the writer wrote it? Do they have a self-
interest or a political viewpoint that might make them overly
biased?
· Besides the differences between scholarly, non-scholarly, and

7. Internet sources, what else do you know about where your
research was published? Is it an academic book? An article in a
respected journal? An article in a news magazine or newspaper?
However, avoid citing secondary sources with no bibliographies
(which means no newspapaers, blogs, or weekly magazines).
· When was it published? Given your research topic, how
important do you think the date of publication is? You will
have more credibility the more current the publications are.
· Are you keeping your summaries brief and to the point,
focusing on the point your research source is trying to make?
· If it’s part of the assignment, are you including a sentence or
two about how you see this piece of research fitting into your
overall research project?
complaints about the performance of our present help
desk, so people’s concern in this area may be a case
of preferring our familiar mediocre service to the
unknown. However, the task force understood peo-
ple’s fears and put a lot of effort into defining per-
formance criteria, both for response to help desk calls
and time to resolve problems. We have involved large
numbers of our users in defining these service crite-
ria, and ABC has agreed that they are attainable, and

8. they will pay significant penalties if they are not met.
In Europe, each country has its local help desk
support.With all the divided responsibility, this is
hard to manage with a hodgepodge of processes and
no global view of our support issues. ABC will pro-
vide a global help desk with a single process and an
integrated database that all countries will work off
of. Furthermore, ABC’s help desk will be globally
redundant as it can be supported from any site where
ABC provides help desk services. We believe that
help desk support will be a shining example of the
value outsourcing brings to the table.
In the final analysis we have to recognize that
Schaeffer’s world has changed. We have to move our
mind-set into the twenty- first century where informa-
tion technology organizations will also become man-
agers of IT service providers rather than providing all
the services themselves. The challenge of our IT peo-

9. ple will be to manage a long-term relationship with
ABC, and at the same time to establish closer relation-
ships with users in the divisions so that information
technology can more effectively support the essential
needs and strategic directions of the business.
Harding responded to some of the concerns that had
been expressed:
We have been very concerned about what may hap-
pen to our IT people who may be displaced. Many
people who worked in this organization were worried
about what outsourcing would mean for them. We
tried to engage them with ABC so that they could
learn about what it would mean to work for ABC. We
brought in ABC people who joined them from a
client firm who talked with our people about how
wonderful it had been for their career. We tried to
convince our people that if you are a technical per-
son, working for ABC is a good thing because you

10. have so many more opportunities for technical career
development and advancement. Instead of working in
Vilonia in an IT organization with only 100 positions,
you are going to work with a company that is global
and has 100,000 employees. Unfortunately, that argu-
ment worked with a few people, but the bulk of the
people had the attitude—“Look, I care about my
career advancement, but I want to stay in Vilonia.”
We had about 100 headcount when we started
studying outsourcing. However, during the outsourcing
decision process, 10 people decided to leave for other
jobs; and we did not fill these vacancies with Schaeffer
employees—we filled these positions with temps—so
now we have 90 Schaeffer IT employees who will be
affected. ABC will likely offer jobs to about 40 of our
current employees, but some of them may not take
them because in the long run they might have to leave
Vilonia. So at least 50 people will be terminated if they

11. can’t find other jobs somewhere within Schaeffer. They
will be given six months’ pay and help in finding other
employment. Fifty is a very small number when com-
pared to the thousands of Schaeffer’s people in Vilonia.
It has been suggested that we could use the
resources that we will devote to outsourcing to build
up our internal IT resources and employ more con-
tractors and thereby satisfy our future needs. This sug-
gestion simply reflects a lack of understanding of how
different our future must be. Although we have good
information technology resources today, “good” will
not be good enough. We are going to have to change
our corporate aspiration level from being satisfied
with our insular way of doing things, to a situation
where in critical areas we aspire to be the very best.
To accomplish our goals, our IT support must be the
very best, and ABC is clearly outstanding in providing
that support. ABC brings IT resources that we simply

12. cannot match given our size and location.
It has been suggested that we outsource IT for
Reitzel only, and leave all IT in-house for the other divi-
sions. That would be very expensive because we would
lose economies of scale. We would have to restart nego-
tiations with our current vendors as well as ABC, and
would not be able to get the same deals because of the
smaller scale. Furthermore, today our IT operations for
all three divisions are consolidated into a shared infra-
structure. To break this infrastructure apart to take out
Reitzel would be very expensive and take many months.
That would be a logistical nightmare for Reitzel, espe-
cially when they are attempting to concentrate manage-
ment attention on leveraging their core competencies.
Our management is going to have all it can handle just
striving to meet its ambitious growth goals.
It was now up to Schaeffer’s corporate management
to make a decision on the task force recommendation.

13. Case Study IV-3 • IT Infrastructure Outsourcing at Schaeffer
(A): The Outsourcing Decision 633
Teaching Note on Case Study IV-3
IT Infrastructure Outsourcing at Schaeffer (A):
The Outsourcing Decision
Objectives
The purpose of both Schaeffer Case A and Schaeffer Case B are
to illustrate some of the potential advantages and disadvantages
of IS outsourcing in general and outsourcing IT infrastructure
activities (data center, network operations, help desk and
desktop support) in particular. Case A focuses on the decision-
making process for a company that previously had performed
these IS activities with in-house personnel. It also illustrates
complexities involved in making such a decision in a company
that has business units that have different growth goals.
Overview
Schaeffer Corporation is a diversified manufacturer with three
autonomous business divisions and annual sales of around $2
billion. Headquartered in a small Midwestern town, Schaeffer
as a whole has had slow but steady growth over the years.
However, in 2001 its board of directors set very ambitious
growth goals.
The Reitzel division currently contributes about 80% of
Schaeffer’s total profits. This division has the best potential for
significant growth, and corporate executive management has set
“stretch” goals that will require this division to expand its
product lines, expand its international operations, and acquire
other companies. The division currently has operations in many
European countries and a smaller presence in South America.

14. Previously each division had its own IT organization, but a few
years ago IT was centralized into a “shared services” IT unit for
the entire corporation. The IT VP’s for each division remained
in key liaison positions, but now reported to the corporate CIO
as well as their business managers. In 2002 the data center had
300 servers and a staff of 100—including desktop support, help
desk people, and voice and data communications. Seventy other
staff members work in a centralized system development group.
The same ERP system was used across the company, but each
division had installed their own “instance” of the package. The
business units generally regarded the IT organization as
providing good levels of service in the past—although WAN
management and help desk support were less satisfactory than
other types of support. More importantly, some executives are
concerned that the explosive growth anticipated by the Reitzel
division in the future cannot be supported by the current IT
group.
P.A. Moreno, Reitzel’s vice president of human resources, has
proposed that Schaeffer outsource its IT resources, with the
exception of systems development. A. Harding, the vice
president of IT, established an internal task force that included
Moreno to investigate the feasibility of the proposal.
Consultants from Gartner Consulting Group were brought in to
help the firm with the decision process.
Case Study IV-3—IT Infrastructure Outsourcing at Schaeffer
(A)
The task force spent 12 months determining in detail what IT
assets the company had, the services being provided, and the
unit costs to provide those services. This documentation was
then used to prepare a 200-page request for proposal (RFP) to
solicit proposals from two Tier 1 service providers that Gartner

15. thought could supply the international support that would be
needed. The RFP specified that the vendors would need to
continue to operate the company’s data center out of Vilonia.
When the bids from the two vendors came back in, ABC
Corporation was the lowest bidder ($220 million). However, the
projected cost of outsourcing over seven years was $20 million
more than the projected cost of keeping IT in-house, which
would be unacceptable to top management. By removing some
optional items that had been included in the RFP, the task force
was able to negotiate the price down to where the bid was no
more than the projected cost of staying in-house. The task force
then recommended to top management that the bid from ABC be
accepted.
When this recommendation was circulated to Schaeffer’s
business divisions, some managers were in favor of it. From the
quotations provided in the case it can be inferred that
Schaeffer’s corporate managers and Reitzel management
supported outsourcing, but key managers from the other two
divisions were opposed. The case ends without a resolution to
the controversy.
Questions for Discussion
1. What benefits does Schaeffer hope to achieve from
outsourcing its IT infrastructure?
The major perceived benefits were vastly improved flexibility,
improved management, and superior technical capabilities. The
proponents of outsourcing felt strongly that their in-house IT
organization simply could not support Reitzel’s strategy of
expanding into new product lines, acquiring companies, and
expanding into new parts of the world.

16. The proponents originally hoped to save money, but that didn’t
pan out.
2. Describe the steps taken to develop the RFP and the role that
an outside consultant played in this process.
It is difficult to prepare an RFP for infrastructure services
because it requires knowing in detail what your IS organization
does for different units and describing these specific activities
clearly in the RFP. You must also define and specify
performance measures for everything you want to contract out.
What the outsourcing company will do will be described in the
proposed contract, and anything not included will either not be
done or will cost extra.
The services provided are priced in terms of cost per unit of
activity, so you must determine the current (and perhaps future)
level of activity for everything, multiply each by its price, and
add it up to determine what you will be paying. Then you have
to figure out what you are currently paying (or expecting to
pay) for performing these services in-house to enable
comparison with.
Schaeffer took about a year to collect the service data and a few
more months to prepare the RFP. The bidders were given two
months to respond to the RFP with their cost bids, and then the
negotiations with ABC Corporation began.
Gartner worked with the firm to develop a process for collecting
service and unit cost data and then advised them as to what
group of outsourcing firms had the international capabilities
needed to respond to the RFP.
3. What were the perceived disadvantages to outsourcing raised
by its managers?

17. There were a number of concerns that were expressed:
1) Concerns about losing control over a critical resource such as
IT, and what would result if the relationship with ABC
Corporation did not work out.
2) Concerns about what would happen to Schaeffer’s current IT
people and the impact that this might have on morale throughout
the company.
3) Concerns that the costs might be significantly understated.
4) Concerns that all the benefits from outsourcing would go to
the Reitzel division, which was the only division with an
international scope. This might mean that Reitzel would get
good service from ABC, but the other divisions might be a
lower priority for the vendor. The other divisions were also
concerned that they would bear a disproportionate share of the
cost.
5) Concerns that the help desk would be in a remote location
and thus less responsive to the needs of Schaeffer personnel.
4. Some managers have suggested a third alternative: outsource
the IT infrastructure for the Reitzel division only. Which
alternative do you think Schaeffer should choose, and why?
It is pretty clear that the flexibility, management and technical
expertise, and worldwide scope of ABC Corporation will
provide far better IT capabilities for Reitzel’s needs than the in-
house IT organization. Assuming that Schaeffer management
intends to pursue its aggressive growth strategy, it appears that
it should accept ABC’s bid.

18. The suggestion that Schaeffer Corporation outsource Reitzel’s
IT and leave the other divisions alone might be examined
further, but it is not likely to prove to be a viable alternative
due to the loss of economies of scale.
5. Why do you think so many disadvantages were raised after
the task force recommendation had been developed? How could
this controversy have been avoided?
Those who favored outsourcing were corporate managers or
Reitzel managers. They believed that the ambitious growth
goals could not be achieved without drastically improved IT
capabilities that could best be provided through outsourcing,
and if success were not achieved it would reflect on their units.
Those who opposed outsourcing were from the other Schaeffer
divisions. These managers feared that Reitzel would get most of
the benefits and that their divisions would bear more than their
share of the costs. Because their bonuses were also tied to only
their own division’s bottom line, there was no clear advantage
to them to support an IT arrangement that would not directly
benefit their own division now or in the future—since they
competed in industries with fewer opportunities for expansion.
Also, the company had no IT outsourcing experience, and some
of them feared such a change.
A paper's bibliography is much more than documentation or
credit for sources you used. It can serve as a resource for future
scholars. It allows the reader to understand your ideas more
clearly by referring to the original source. It gives credibility to
your work as an example of scholarship.
For your research paper, you will be creating an annotated
bibliography.

19. In your response to this forum, create three annotated
bibliography entries you are using for the paper. Annotations
are usually around 150-200 words each, to include author's
expertise, a synopsis of the publication, and how relates to the
paper.
TIP: Students usually wait until the end to put together their
bibliography. Get in the habit of creating a word document early
in the research process where you can save your resources in the
correct format. This will save you time. Remember to have a
balance between primary and secondary sources for credibility.
Finally, try to reference secondary sources that are 5 years old
or less - also for credibility. Older sources can be useful, but
there's a stronger need to make sure the information is not
obsolete or outdated.