GATHERING MATERIALS

1. USING YOUR OWN KNOWLEDGE AND EXPERIENCE

2. DOING LIBRARY RESEARCH
3. SEARCHING THE INTERNET
4. INTERVIWEING
5. TIPS FOR DOING RESEARCH
INTRODUCTION
Gathering materials for a speech is like gathering
information for any project. There are many resources
available if you take advantage of them. You can
interview people with specialized knowledge. You can
do research on the Internet or in the library.
Sometimes you can use yourself as a resource—
whenever you have personal experience or above
average about a subject.
USING YOUR OWN KNOWLEDGE AND
EXPERIENCE
Using subjects with which we are familiar.

Personal experiences
Doing Library research
Even in this age of the Internet, you will get some of
the information for your speeches from the library. It
contains many resources to help you find what you
need, including librarians, the catalogue, reference
works, and databases.
LIBRARIANS
Too often students waste their time wandering
aimlessly in the library because they are afraid to ask
for assistance. They don’t want to appear stupid or to
“bother” anyone. But would you be as sensitive about
asking a doctor for help with a medical problem?
Librarians are experts in their own field, trained in
library use and research methods. If you have a
question, don’t hesitate to ask a librarian. He or she
can help you find your way, locate sources, even track
down a specific piece of information.
THE CATALOGUE
A listing of all the books, periodicals, and other
resources owned by a library.

Computer catalogues allow search by the book title,

author name or book name.

The key to find book is call number which helps to

find the right shelves of the book.
REFERENCE WORKS
Reference works are usually kept in a part of the
library called the reference section. The right reference
work can save you hours of time by putting at your
fingertips a wealth of information that might be
difficult to locate through the library catalogue. The
major kinds of reference works you are likely to use for
your speeches are encyclopedias, yearbooks, quotation
books, and biographical aids.
ENCYCLOPEDIAS
We are all familiar with general encyclopedias such as
the Encyclopedia Britannica . But there are also special
encyclopedias that cover their fields in more depth
than do general encyclopedias. Some of the most
frequently used special encyclopedias are the African
American Encyclopedia, the Encyclopedia of Religion,
and the McGraw-Hill Encyclopedia of Science and
Technology .
YEARBOOKS
As the name implies, yearbooks are published
annually. They contain an amazing amount of current
information that would otherwise be all but
impossible to track down. Two of the most valuable
yearbooks are Facts on File and World Almanac and
Book of Facts.
QUOTATION BOOKS
The best-known collection of quotations is Bartlett’s
Familiar Quotations. With more than 25,000
quotations from historical and contemporary figures,
it has long been regarded as an indispensable source
for speakers and writers alike. Other excellent
quotation books include the Oxford Dictionary of
Quotations, The New Quotable Woman, and Ancient
Echoes: Native American Words of Wisdom.
BIOGRAPHICAL AIDS
When you need information about people in the
news, you can turn to one of the many reference works
that contain brief life and career facts about
contemporary men and women. The most popular
biographical aids are published by Who’s Who, which
produces such titles as International Who’s Who and
Who’s Who in America. More specialized biographical
aids include Contemporary Black Biography,
Dictionary of Hispanic Biography, and Who’s Asian
Americans.
NEWSPAPER AND PERIODICAL DATABASES
Newspaper and periodical databases allow you to
locate articles in thousands of publications, including
Time, Atlantic, the New York Times, and the Wall
SEARCHING THE INTERNET
The Internet has been called the world’s biggest
library. But unlike a library, the Internet has no central
information desk, no librarians, no catalogue, and no
reference section. Nor does it have a person or
department in charge of determining whether
materials are of high quality. You can unearth a great
deal of information on the Internet, but you cannot
always find the same range and depth as in a good
library. This is why experts advise that you use the
Internet to supplement not to replace, library research.
SEARCH ENGINES
Search engines are the key to finding materials on the
Internet. There are numerous search engines, but the
most widely used by far is Google.
 In addition to providing access to billions of Web
pages, it has specialized search tools devoted to
images, video, news, blogs, and finance.
SPECIALIZED RESEARCH RESOURCES
Search engines are extremely helpful, but they are not
the only vehicles for finding information. The
following specialized resources concentrate on sites
that are most likely to be helpful as you work on your
speeches.
1. Virtual Libraries
Search engines help you find what’s on the Internet,
but they don’t evaluate the quality of the sources they
retrieve. Librarians and other information specialists
are working to make it easier to locate reliable, high-
quality Web resources.
A search engine that combines internet technology
with traditional library methods of cataloguing and
assessing data.
Government Resources
One of the great strengths of the Internet as a research
tool is the access it provides to government documents
and publications. Whether you are looking for
information from the federal government or from a
state or local agency.
The Special Case of Wikipedia
With more than 18 million articles, Wikipedia is the
biggest encyclopedia in human history. Each month, some
400 million people access one or more of its articles,
making it the seventh most visited Web site in the world.
One benefit of Wikipedia is that its major articles are
followed by an extensive set of additional resources. Those
resources include footnotes, a list of references, external
links, and, in some cases, video and/or still images. If you
take advantage of these resources, they will lead you to a
vast amount of information beyond that in Wikipedia.
EVALUATING INTERNET DOCUMENTS
When you do research in a library, everything you find
has been evaluated one way or another before it gets to
you. Books, magazines, and journals have editorial
procedures to determine whether a given work should
or should not be published. Once a work is published,
it has to be approved by the acquisitions staff for
inclusion in the library
Authorship
Is the author of the Web document you are assessing
clearly identified? If so, what are his or her
qualifications? Is the author an expert on the topic?
Can her or his data and opinions be accepted as
objective and unbiased? Just as you should not cite a
book or magazine article without identifying the
author and his or her credentials, so you should not
cite an electronic work in the absence of this
information.
Sponsorship
Many Web documents are published by businesses,
government agencies, public-interest groups, and the
like rather than by individual authors. In such cases, you
must judge whether the sponsoring organization is
impartial enough to cite in your speech.
 Is the organization objective in its research and fair-
minded in its statements?
 Is it economically unbiased with regard to the issue
under discussion?
 Does it have a history of accuracy and nonpartisanship?
RECENCY
The best way to determine the recency of an Internet document is to look for a
copyright date, publication date, or date of last revision at the top or bottom of the
document. If you are using a source located through a virtual library, you can usually
be confident of its currency, as well as its objectivity and reliability. News,
government, and academic sites also usually include the date on which a document
was last updated.
Once you know the date of the document, you can determine whether it is current
enough to use in your speech. This is especially important with regard to statistics,
which you should never cite from an undated source , whether in print or on the
Internet.
Of course, the date of a Web page is easy to change, so someone who wants to make
information appear up-to-date can easily do so. But if you have already verified the
credibility of the author and the sponsoring organization, you can usually assume
that the date of the information is valid. If you can’t find the date on which a Web
document was created or last modified, search for another work whose recency you
can verify.