Use reference articles from specialized encyclopedias to locate history on your art form and an overview of how it had developed or been influenced over time-- this can help you summarize the history of your art form as well as acting as a starting point for creating the criteria you'll suggest.
Read through your beginning information and background you find in overview sources like subject reference to identify keywords you can use to build future searches to explore your art form.
Try to group similar keywords together-- see the example below:
Example Art Form: RPG Video Games
| Topic | Keywords | Synonyms | Related Ideas |
| RPG Video Games |
"Video Games" (names of major creators, like: "Square Enix") |
"Games" "Computer Games" "role playing video games" "SquareSoft" (name of the company prior to 2000) |
other genres of video games, like: "action adventure," "puzzle," "strategy," etc. Titles that are similar, but not considered this type of game, like "World of Warcraft" |
For this assignment, an annotation is a summary that goes directly below your MLA Works Cited citation for each source.
In an annotation, you will explain in a few sentences what information the source contained that was useful for your research and how it applied to your art theme.
Don't summarize the entire work if you only used part of it, such as one article from a reference encyclopedia. Instead, just summarize the part you used.