Historically Significant Informative Speech

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GETTING STARTED

Is your topic too big to cover in a short speech? Is your topic so specific that sources will be hard to find? Use subject encyclopedias in the Reference Section to find a topic, narrow your topic, find keywords, and get background information before you even start your research.

To find Reference Books in the Library, visit http://lrc.cod.edu/search/X and limit your search Location to "Reference"

BOOKS TO GET YOU STARTED

Reference Books

Great Events from History— various call numbers
Great Lives from History— various call numbers
Historical Dictionary of… — add the name of a country

eBooks from Salem Press

Browse topics
Browse people
Read articles from Great Events in History and Decades

FINDING ARTICLES

History Databases

History Study Center: rare British, American and world history sources and articles
JSTOR: archive of digitized journal articles ranging in date from the 1700's
HarpWeek: articles and images from the 1857-1912 Harper's Weekly magazine
Academic Search Premier and Academic OneFile: general article databases

Newspaper Databases

New York Times Historical (1851-2004)
Chicago Tribune Historical (1849-1986)

FINDING INFORMATION ABOUT PEOPLE

Biographies in database

American National Biography— for dead Americans/American icons only
Discovering Collection
Literature Resource Center— for writers
Marquis Who’s Who— basic data on notable individuals

Articles

General Databases

Academic Search Premier: easiest to use for finding articles on people--search for your person and narrow results by clicking SUBJECTS

FINDING IMAGES

Databases

History Study Center has images and video
Historical Newspapers are full-text and feature photographs

Internet

Recommended historical image sources: links to pages selected by COD librarians.
LIFE photo archive: the largest, most amazing collection of professional photography on the Web.
Digital History: links to image sites covering historical subjects from "Advertising" to "World War II"