Chapter 12 Preparing and Researching Presentations 355Search the Literature
Published literature lets you reach beyond your own knowledge and experience
and can be a valuable resource for supporting material for your speech. If you’re
giving a speech on hip-hop music, for example, you’re likely to find some great
material in the pages of a magazine like Vibe. If you’re looking for studies on
mental health issues affecting emergency personnel after the Boston Marathon
bombings, you might search through newspaper articles or scholarly journals
such as the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA).
Most current publications are available in searchable databases in libraries;
some can even be accessed online or via a tablet or smartphone apps (though you
may have to pay a fee to download complete articles). Such databases give you
access to a wealth of stored information. The Internet Movie Database (www
.imdb.com), for instance, is a great example of a commonly used database, and its
comprehensive information on film, television, and video games is entirely free.
Another type of secondary resource is a directory. Directories are created
and maintained by people rather than automatically by computers. Because
human editors compile them, directories—like the American Library Directory
Online—often return fewer links but higher-quality results. Directories guide
you to the main page of a Web site organized within a wider subject category.
You can also access useful literature through library gateways—collections of
databases and information sites arranged by subject, generally reviewed and
recommended by experts (usually librarians). These gateway collections assist in
your research and reference needs because they identify suitable academic pages
on the Web. In addition to scholastic resources, many library gateways include
links to specialty search engines for biographies, quotations, atlases, maps, ency-
clopedias, and trivia.
Make the Most of Online Research
Twenty years ago, the first stop on any research mission would have been the
library. Today, the Internet puts a massive amount of information at your fin-
gertips. In fact, nearly half of all college students are using their smartphones
and tablets to do research for their class assignments (Parker, Lenhart, & Moore,
2012). Navigating the vast sea of information—not to mention misinforma-
tion—available on the Internet can be daunting and, without wise searching,
a waste of time. A solid knowledge of search tools can therefore make your
searches more fruitful and efficient.
An Internet search engine is a program that indexes Web content. Search
engines such as Google, Yahoo!, and Bing search all over the Web for documents
containing specific keywords that you’ve chosen. Search engines have some key
WE RELY HEAVILY on
the Internet for our research
needs. In fact, to google has
become a legitimate verb in
our everyday language.
Courtesy of Google