Creating Annotated Bibliographies

Annotated bibliographies include information beyond the standard bibliographic information. They may also include the abstract (the Abstract field), research notes (the Research Notes field), or other notes about the references (the Notes field).

To create a basic bibliography that includes abstracts, you can use the Annotated style included with EndNote. The Annotated style is based on the Author-Date style, and creates an alphabetical listing of the references (by author), with the abstract appended to each reference.

To create a custom annotated style, see the information below.

The Abstract, Notes, and Research Notes Fields

The fields most frequently used in annotated bibliographies are the Abstract, Notes, and Research Notes fields. You may add any of these fields to a style to create a custom style for your annotated bibliography.

Abstract: Use this field to include an abstract of the reference material. When importing data from an online database, the abstract will be imported, if available.
Notes: Use this field for general notes about the reference material. When importing from an online database, data that does not belong in a predefined field, but which might be of interest, is imported into the Notes field. This information may inclued variations on author names, information on related materials, information on photographs included in the material, etc.
Research Notes: Use this field for your personal research notes and observations about the material. EndNote will never import data into the Research Notes field; it is reserved for your notes only.

Modifying a Style to Create an Annotated Bibliography

For this example, we will modify the APA 7th style to include the Research Notes field. (This type of style would be useful if a professor requested an annotated bibliography with all your personal notes on the references you plan to use for a thesis or dissertation.)

From the Tools menu, select Output Styles, and then select Open Style Manager.
Select the APA 7th (or the style of your choice) style, and then click the Edit button to open the style for editing.
Select Layout from the options under the Bibliography heading and click in the text box under the "End each reference with" heading. Text or fields inserted into this section appear at the end of each reference in the bibliography.
To insert the research notes on a new line after each reference: select End of Paragraph from the Insert Field list. This will ensure the contents of the Research Notes field will appear on a new line beneath the bibliographic data.
There are options available for quick insertion on the Insert Field list, including the Abstract and Notes fields, but the Research Notes field we need is not on the list. The field can still be added by typing it in manually, being very carefull the name is entered exactly as it shows in the Generic reference type. In this case, "Research Notes" without the quotations marks.
(Optional) If you want an extra line break after the Research Notes, you can use the Insert Field list to add it at the end of the End each reference with text box.
From the File menu, select Save As and give the style a new name, but keep the .ens extension. Your new style will be saved in an \\EndNote\Styles folder in your documents folder. By storing your custom styles in your documents folder, EndNote ensures they will not be removed if you uninstall EndNote or install a new version of EndNote that might overwrite the program styles.
Close the style.

The new style will now appear in the Output Styles submenu of the Tools menu. If you format a paper, print, or export references using this style, the research notes will be included in the bibliography.

Note: Some styles, such as the APA styles, are set to have a hanging indent for each paragraph. This means that each new line will start at the left margin and the subsequent lines in that paragraph will be indented. To adjust the Hanging Indent settings in your custom style, see Hanging Indents.