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Birthday Speech2

White birthday cake

Contents

Assignment

The birthday speech is a combination of a speech to inform and a story or narrative. Your assignment is to prepare a classroom presentation that focuses on four (4) newsworthy events that happened either on the day or during the week (seven (7) days) immediately before or immediately following the day you were born (a total of 14 days to consider). (See actual assignment for more detail)

Locating Events

These resources will be helpful in identifying the most significant events of the time.

Reference Books
American Decades Reference E 169.12 .A419
Chronology of the United States Reference E 174.5 .C63 1997
Day by Day: The Eighties Reference D 427 .D3x
Day by Day: The Nineties Reference D856 .A93
Facts on File Reference D 410 .F3


Magazines and Newspapers
Browse throught the headlines or featured articles in any of the nation's "news" sources. Many of the older issues are on microfilm. Note the dates the Library has available. Some titles to consider are:
Time 1923 to present
Newsweek 1933 to present
US News and World Report 1948 to present
Business Week 1950 to present
Sports Illustrated 1954 to present
Chicago Tribune 1972 to present
Christian Science Monitor 1983 to present
New York Times 1851 to present
Wall Street Journal 1974 to present


You may also look at some of the on-line covers and table of contents of the major news sources. DON'T ask to see the articles though, you will be asked to pay a fee and you can find the same articles in the Library's databases listed below.

Time is one of the major news magazines online that is set up for browsing, just click on Past Covers. Remember that the date on most weekly news magazines, such as Time, is usually the date is is pulled off the store shelves. For example on May 15th the issue dated May 22nd is distributed.

You may also use some of the databases listed below to locate events, but it is easier to distinguish the more important events using the print resources

Researching Events

If you browsed through sources to find your events you will have already discovered some articles on your topics. You probably want to find more from different sources so that you can see different viewpoints. If your event was really historically significant you may want later articles that include more long-term evaluation of the event. You can usually use the Library's databases for this type of search, but remember

  1. few databases go back prior to 1980
  2. not all articles may be full text-you may need to go back to the "original" source.


General Databases
Expanded Academic ASAP 1980 to present
Periodical Abstracts 1987 to present
Wilson Select Plus 1994 to present


Newspaper Databases
Note: most of the full text newspapers are national news.
Chicago Tribune & Chicago Tribune Historical 1847 to present
Christian Science Monitor 1988 to present
New York Times & New York Times Historical 1851 to present
Wall Street Journal 1984 to present
Washington Post 1989 to present


Marianne Berger, Reference Librarian
630.942.2338
berger@cdnet.cod.edu

16 May 2006

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