Annotated Bibliography for your Long Critical Argument

The purpose behind doing an annotated bibliography at the time of your Q at I is to make sure there is enough available material for you to write a good paper on your chosen topic. Since you are demonstrating that you can create a credible argument for an identified, specialty audience, you need to use sources that add to your ethos and reinforce your arguments. In other words, the days of the Wikipedia are over; you're moving up to peer-reviewed (also known as "refereed") sources. And the places to find these listed are in library databases--collections of indexed and searchable sources.

 The easiest place by far to find peer-reviewed sources is in the Dacus online database section. You can find a list by subject at http://www.winthrop.edu/dacus/subjectguides/subjectguides.htm. That's an easy way to start. And as I mentioned, librarians have graduate degrees in Looking Things Up. Feel free to ask their advice, as well as the advice of your professors. If you can't tell if a source is peer-reviewed or the database doesn't let you sort by that designator (or "refereed publication" which is a synonym for "peer-reviewed"), look for articles in scholarly journals--usually there will be a tab that lets you sort for those results.

 
If it's appropriate to your audience and Q at I, you can certainly also use publications like The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, etc. Technically they're not peer-reviewed, but they are carefully edited and are respected by professionals in their fields. In some specific cases (for instance, if you're writing about an issue in Columbia), you might want to use a regional publication like The State; if you're writing for a specialty group (say, golfers), you might use Golf Digest or Sports Illustrated. If appropriate, you might want to use official sets of statistics or numbers--for instance, to get the number of households with solar power from the Statistical Abstract of the United States, Stat USA-Internet, or a similar source. Use your judgment; remember, you are choosing these expert witnesses to add to the credibility of your argument, so choose them with that idea in mind.
 
If you're looking for the MLA style of documenting materials you find in an online database, see the 7th edition of the Prentice Hall Handbook (the one with the eagle statue on the cover), pp. 430 ff. (There is a very limited selection in the 6th edition of Prentice Hall [the one with Tillman or the sunflower on the cover] p. 390); if you don't have the 7th edition, check the library reference desk or the Writing Center, or borrow one from a freshman friend.
 
For those of you who have asked, here's a sample annotation in MLA form:

O’Neill, Saffron J., et al.  "Using Expert Knowledge to Assess Uncertainties in Future Polar Bear Populations Under Climate Change." Journal of Applied Ecology 45. 6 (2008): 1649-1659. Geobase. First Search.
         Winthrop U Lib., Rock Hill, SC. 23 October 2008 <http://0-firstsearch.oclc.org.library.winthrop.edu>.
In this article the authors describe how researchers can combine observational reports with historical database figures to predict fluctuations in polar bear populations. They argue that correlating these predictions with well-recorded data about temperature change, ice level, and availability of food sources allows for more accurate estimations of how climate change is affecting the Arctic polar bear population.  I will use this information in my paper to help establish the context of my Q at I and to support my assumption that climate change _is_ hurting the polar bears' ability to survive.
Feel free to e-mail me if you have questions. Enjoy the search!