What Is A Bibliographic Essay?

A detailed analysis of a well-defined literature is called a bibliographic essay. It is basically a narrative or a review of a topic of literature. It is similar to a conversation that not only gives advice but also shapes the resource into a compatible survey of the resource available. When the bibliographic essay of a raw material is placed in the hands of someone who has no idea about that piece of literature, they should quickly grasp the extent, history, general idea of the content and key points of the literature.

It is not a simple summary of each article of the book though. Rather, it is an analysis that divides the literature into understandable sub groups, enlightens the reader on the content and major issues and provides the readers with knowledge of the book. Thus, a bibliographic essay is a tool of research developed by its authors so that others can take interest in the topic and helps its probable readers to get a hold of the basic understanding of the analyzed literature. 

At the last part of the essay there should be an annotated bibliography that will provide all the citations of the books and articles that are discussed. Annotated means that at the end of every analytical essay there should be one or two lines illustration of the book or article that would state a general significance of the description.

To write a bibliographic essay one first needs to establish a topic, then they need to search for sources of information, then they have to thoroughly read the information and take notes of key points that they want to discuss. After completing the steps they need to organize their ideas in a compact way and write the draft first. After drafting they must use endnotes to document sources. After that they must write an annotated bibliography and finally revise the draft and finish the essay.

There is no fixed number of pages for an essay, but any detailed essay that is under twenty five pages is considered too short and pages more than forty pages are considered as too long. Therefore, the general aim has to be, one needs to complete the essay within thirty to thirty five pages excluding the annotated bibliography at the end.

There should be plenty of references of books or articles to cover 30-35 pages of analysis, but not too many that there would be shortage for information and reasonable analysis. A rough estimate can be, taking 20-25 books or articles into consideration. The more number of books are taken for reference, the shorter the bibliography will be. Bibliographic essays that cover around 50 articles must be avoided.

All the books that are taken for reference must be placed in the category or sub groups that have been ascertained. Every book should at least be categorized with the reason behind its categorization. Obviously there will be some complex books that need more discussion and more length compared to others.

The key is to define a topic that produces the perfect number of books. While the bibliography does not intend to be elaborative, it should aim for a basic discussion of all the major topics in the relevant literature. Once the topic has been destined, it is a good idea to discuss it with the most recent publication on the topic for better understanding of the literature.

However, this falls off to provide all the information; therefore a good library work is needed. A bibliographic essay is the narrative discussion that draws images of the literature taken where the bibliography with detailed annotations comes at the end of the essay. The main purpose of a bibliographic essay is to give credit to those authors whose work has been included in the essay. It helps the readers to know more about the topic and the author. It will lead the readers towards growing interest about the book and literature as a whole.

EssayExpert.us primarily focuses on challenges in writing different types of thesis papers and articles. Among those articles, bibliographic essays have been considered as a part of students’ course of study. Our website aims at the better future of students. In order to provide guidelines to students for their betterment, we intend to offer services so that it can help the students to understand what a bibliographic essay with clarity of vision is. This will help the students to properly write a bibliographic essay with precision.