After you have generated main ideas, it's time to research the speech. There are several ways for you to gather supporting material for your speech. On this page, we'll discuss:
Internet search engines help you navigate the maze of the materials on the Internet. It is often said that the Internet is a huge library with no card catalog. Internet search engines function as card catalogs, but using them can be difficult, incomplete, and time consuming if you don't know how to phrase your searches correctly. In this section, we'll discuss how to search three search engines.
Before search Yahoo!, it is advisable to check out its help pages, located at http://howto.yahoo.com/. Read through several of the pages and learn how to structure your Yahoo! searches effectively. A few tips you'll uncover include:
If you put quotation marks around your search terms, you'll get search results that only contain that exact phrasing. If you leave off the quotation marks, you'll get results that contain any of the words that you typed in. For example, searching the two words Mark McGwire will find web pages related to anyone named Mark or McGwire. Searching for "Mark McGwire" will only find those pages that refer to the baseball player.
After you enter your search terms, the first results you see are Yahoo! categories. If you click on one of these, you'll be taken to that specific category. From there you can browse a list of related, individual sites and click on one of your choosing.
Read the Yahoo! site for more search tips.
Before searching Altavista, check out its help page, located at http://www.altavista.com/av/content/help.htm. Here are few tips you'll learn:
When in doubt, use lowercase text in your searches. When you use lowercase text, the search service finds both upper and lowercase results. When you use upper case text, the search service finds only upper case. For example, when you search for paris, you'll find Paris, paris, and PARIS in your result pages. However, when you search for Paris, you'll only see Paris in the result pages.
To make sure that a specific word is always included in your search topic, place the plus (+) symbol before the key word in the search box. To make sure that a specific word is always excluded from your search topic, place a minus (-) sign before the keyword in the search box. For example, to find recipes for cookies with oatmeal but without raisins, try recipe cookie +oatmeal -raisin.
Expand your search using wildcards (*). By typing an * at the end of a keyword, you can search for the word with multiple endings. For example, type wish*, to find wish, wishes, wishful, wishbone, and wishy-washy.
Before searching HotBot, check out its search tips page, located at http://www.hotbot.com/help/tips/search_features.asp. Here are some HotBot features:
Boolean operators are the power searcher's friend. They allow you to enter "advanced" searches directly as text, instead of using the Modify panel. To use any Boolean operators, you must first select "Boolean Search" from the "all the words" menu.
Query modifiers can be used to further refine all the words, any of the words, and Boolean searches. When entering search terms into the main or Modify type-in boxes, you can use quotation marks around phrases ("search engines") and pluses and minuses before words and phrases (+sports -"ice hockey"). These query modifiers allow greater control of search results.
Meta words are short cuts that allow experienced searchers to use HotBot's non-text search features from the main text box. A Meta word is a keyword:value pair, separated by a colon (with no spaces). For example: the title keyword finds values in the titles of Web pages, so a search containing the meta word title:president will return documents with the word president in their titles.
Most search engines have similar features that you can easily learn about by selecting their "Help" sections.
It would now be impossible to try to list even the largest and most well known news and information sites on the Internet. Instead, use these indices to find links to newspapers, magazines, and television networks. Once you reach your desired site, select the "Search" for the site to find specific articles.
For newspapers, http://dir.yahoo.com/News_and_Media/Newspapers/
For magazines, http://dir.yahoo.com/News_and_Media/Magazines/
For television networks, http://dir.yahoo.com/Business_and_Economy/Companies/News_and_Media/Television/Networks/
Also keep in mind that your library's catalog and even full text of some news articles may be online. Consult your school's homepage to find its library link or ask your instructor for information about your library.
The Internet makes it easy to conduct personal email interviews with experts on your subject. Instead of writing or phoning your subject, simply drop them an email and ask a few questions. Save your response from your subject to document what he or she said and see a source citation manual for information on how to cite email interviews.
One of the first steps to conducting an interview is to determine who you should interview. You can often get the names of experts from news articles you have read. Often, the person may be a university professor who has conducted research in your subject area. To find the email of a college professor, consult his or her school's homepage and then use a "Directory" or "Search" feature on the school's website to find the person's email. Here is a list of colleges and universities from Yahoo!: http://dir.yahoo.com/Education/Higher_Education/Colleges_and_Universities/United_States/.
Once you find a subject's email address, spend some time constructing the interview questions. Explain to the person what you are doing and send your message. It's important to plan ahead for personal interviews so that the subject has time to answer your questions.
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