SOURCES OF SUPPORTING MATERIALS
American Psychological Association
Gopher Resources by Academic Subject
University of Missouri-Kansas City Library
Some of the information we use to develop messages is based on personal knowledge--personal experiences, observations, or learning acquired through sources such as school, the media, and reading. As we are exposed to information, we retain a certain amount of it. This knowledge forms the core of our basis for communication. We select words and examples from this storehouse, and we use it to organize messages.
Books
Link to MERLIN catalog.
http://laurel.lso.missouri.edu/
Magazines
For example, look at TimeMagazine's archive of political stories since the 1920's.
http://allpolitics.com/1997/gen/news/back.time/
Newspapers
Kansas City Star
New York Times
Los Angeles Times
Washington Post
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/digest/digest.htm
Journals
Professional organizations often publish journals reporting research and theories in their specific fields.
Communication Studies Web Sites
http://www.umkc.edu/lib/online/database.htm
The National Communication Association, for example, publishes such journals as Communication Education, the Quarterly Journal of Speech, Communication Monographs, and Critical Studies in Mass Communication. Thus, students interested in finding out about some area of speech communication can refer to these journals. These can be accessed by finding the journal in the library or locating it on the Internet through the publishing organization. The NCA, for example, has a home page which you can use to access the journal information.
There are many electronic journals available on-line that are scholarly, peer-reviewed sources.
Scholarly Journals Distributed Via the World Wide is a directory that provides links to established Web-based scholarly journals that offer access to English language article files without requiring user registration or fees.
http://info.lib.uh.edu/wj/webjour.html
Indexes
Remember that an index gives you a minimal amount of information. Thus, if you want in-depth material about Carl Sandburg, a more fruitful approach is to search the subject index of the electronic catalog to locate such sources as Carl Sandburg, by G. W. Allen, and Carl Sandburg, Lincoln of Our Literature, by N. Callahan.
Government Pamphlets
Link to US Government Printing Office
http://www.access.gpo.gov/su_docs/dbsearch.html
Publications from Special-Interest Groups
Special-interest groups such as the American Cancer Society, the Coalition for Rural Development, the American Chemical Society, and the American Society for Training and Development publish information regarding their research and programs. An e-mail, telephone call, or a letter to such an organization often brings a prompt response with the requested materials. Information about these groups can be located in the telephone book or in Gale's Encyclopedia of Associations.
Link to Information about Gale's Encyclopedia of Associations.
Nonprint Media
For ideas, take a look at Media Culture Review.
Interviews
Researchers use interviews to find information that is not available from written or audiovisual sources or to supplement other types of research. What better way is there to find out how the budget of your college is developed, for example, than by talking to the treasurer or the budget director? Interviews can be conducted in a variety of ways. If the person you wish to interview is not available for a face-to-face or a telephone session, you can submit a series of questions to be answered either through writing or tape recording.
Because of the number of experts on the Internet, you may be able to access sources directly through the web. If you were preparing a speech about HIV/AIDS, for example, you might use and Internet source for an electronic interview. You can find the e-mail address of an expert you wish to contact. Or, you may find an information source that has access to an expert (you can e-mail questions for direct contact). Of course, anyone can use the Internet, so you need to make sure you are actually using a reliable expert. But this approach allows you to find the answers to specific questions that may be difficult to answer in other ways.
LINK TO HIV/AIDS INFORMATION
www.thebody.com/cgi-bin/body.cgi
Here are some specific suggestions for conducting an informational interview:
Prepare for the interview.
8.2 COMPUTER SEARCHES
COMPUTER-BASED RETRIEVAL SYSTEMS
LINK TO UMKC ONLINE RESOURCES.
http://www.umkc.edu/lib/online/resource.htm
THE INTERNET
LINK TO LIBRARY OF CONGRESS INTERNET SEARCH
LINK TO EXAMPLE SEARCH ENGINE (HOTBOT)
Find valid sources. Look for sources noted for generally doing accurate research such as universities, scholarly organizations and the government. Here is a source of on-line "publications."
If you are looking for statistics for a speech about rape, for example, you may be able to find information from your local police department, a government web site, a crime prevention institute, or the FBI.
In addition, there are scholarly indexes of information published after being reviewed by experts in the field. You can link to a professional organization, such as the American Psychological Association.
LINK TO APA
http://www.apa.org/homepage.html
From there you can link to an index of 1350 professional journals. PsycINFO contains English language citations and abstracts of journal articles, books, dissertations, and other research materials printed in various languages in the field of psychology. PsycINFO covers all areas of psychology including human and animal psychology; applied, behavioral, and developmental psychology; personality; and neurology and physiology. The print version of this index is Psychological Abstracts.
UMKC LINK TO PsycINFO
http://www.umkc.edu/lib/online/database.htm
APA LINK TO PsychINFO
For a speech about acquaintance rape on college campuses, for example, you could use key words rape, acquaintance, college, and students on an index such as PsycINFO. In one search, PsycINFO yielded 1125 recent scholarly articles on the topic. By narrowing the topic to acquaintance rape, it found 125 publications. This list is manageable for a student to read for the purpose of selecting useful articles for a speech. If you wanted to narrow the topic further, the word college yielded 47,336 publications, and narrowed to college students, there were 6035 publications. By combining key terms acquaintance rape and college students, PsycINFO yielded five specific scholarly books, chapters, and articles that you could use. You could find additional recent scholarly sources in a different data base, such as ERIC. The nature of electronic searches is basically the same, regardless of the type of index.
ERIC
gopher://ericir.syr.edu/1
While online, you can display each of the abstracts from the articles you find in the index, mark the ones that you want to read, and either print the information, or download citations and abstracts on disk, or send the information to yourself via e-mail. From there you can read the information, then obtain the full article from a library as you prepare your speech.
Your university or college can give you electronic access to solid sources and may provide direct access to these kinds of data bases by paying a fee for a site license. In addition, your library may have links to other libraries.
For example, if you access the University of Missouri-Kansas City (UMKC) catalog (called MERLIN), you immediately have access to all information available in the libraries of the four University of Missouri campuses.
UMKC Library Link
These materials are exchanged easily between campuses. By requesting inter-library loan (forms available online), for example, a UMKC student can have a book brought by courier from the Columbia campus.
In addition, the University of Missouri-Kansas is part of a consortium of major libraries in the Kansas City area which gives students access to the prestigious scientific Linda Hall Library, the University of Kansas library, and other area college and university libraries. A UMKC student can obtain a library card that gives access to these libraries so that the student can walk in and use each of these area libraries too.
Scholarly electronic data bases give citation information and abstracts so you can find the article you need, sometimes telling you whether or not they are available at your local or area libraries. Some electronic data bases actually provide complete articles. Because these are academically based, you are likely to access more precise and accurate material than from a generic data base.
8.3 RECORDING YOUR RESEARCH
LISTENING TO SOURCES
As a listener, you should be aware of potential positive and negative uses of information which the speaker presents.
What is your attitude toward radio as a news source? This Internet radio station broadcasts in real time, non-stop.
Forty-three percent of people rely on newspapers, sixteen percent use the radio, 6 percent learn from other people, and four percent rely on magazines as their major news source.11 *** Of course, now Internet programming provides news, entertainment and sports.
Timecast
Reports and commentary on the day's news.
http://www.realaudio.com/contentp/abc.html
Live radio programming from around the world.
http://www.comlab.ox.ac.uk/archive/audio.html
LEARNING
OUTCOMES
After reading this chapter you should be able to:
List and describe the research sources available for use in developing public speaking messages.
Identify basic reference sources used for obtaining overviews, concepts, data, and other types of information necessary for the development of public speeches.
Explain the value of using and the method for finding research sources such as books, magazines, newspapers, journals, indexes, government publications, publications from special-interest groups, and nonprint media.
Record research information.
The sources of information available to a speaker are personal experiences, personal observations, and accumulated learning, plus information derived from research and interviews.
Research information may be found in books, magazines, newspapers, journals, indexes, government publications, and publications from special-interest groups. Additional information can be found in nonprint media and interviews.
A computer-based retrieval system allows a researcher to compile a bibliography or information about a topic from a computer data base.
The Internet can be a valuable information explore tool; however, researchers should realize that the Internet is not always a perfect search source.
When doing research, you should keep a record of where your information comes from.
An oral footnote indicates the source of the information included in a speech.
A quotation is material written or spoken by a person in the exact words in which it was originally presented.
To paraphrase is to put someone else's ideas into your own words.
Listeners should be aware of potential positive and negative uses of information which the speaker presents.
outside knowledge
computer output microfiche (COM)
electronic catalogs
computer-based retrieval system
Internet
quotations
paraphrases
oral footnote
International Association of Business Communicators
http://www.iabc.com/homepage.htm
The Southern States Speech Association
The American Communication
Toastmaster's International New York-New Jersey
http://members.tripod.com/~Big_Talker/index.html