Finding speech topics and doing research

Have you ever gotten stuck when trying to find a topic for a speech? Me too! One way to bypass that dilemma is to get advice from a magazine article. The December 2019 issue of Toastmaster magazine has an article by Craig Harrison titled Everyone Has a Story. On January 5, 2020 I blogged about how Toastmasters may also enjoy reading another magazine. That post mentioned the January-February 2020 issue of Speaker magazine (from the U. S. National Speakers Association) that has another article by Ben Glenn titled Tips for a creative mindset. His seven are: Research, Write It Down, Be Curious, Incorporate Pop Culture, Travel, Go for a Walk, Test Your Material.

Once you have a rough idea for a topic you can go on to research it. Look around to find out how other well-known speakers previously had covered it. Should you begin this process just by using a browser to web search with Google (at their Advanced Search page) or Bing? Heck no!

 About a decade ago I saw an ad in Toastmaster for a monthly magazine called Vital Speeches of the Day. It prints great speeches but an annual subscription currently costs $89. That is more than I want to spend by myself, so I looked for other ways to get access.

But you and I are not alone. Instead we are part of a large, powerful group – Idaho Taxpayers. Collectively we already have paid for access to that magazine (and lots more) via an state organization called Libraries Linking Idaho (LiLI). 85 years of articles from that magazine are available from our public library web sites. I can sign into the EBSCOhost databases with my card number from the Ada Community Library. How many other magazines (journals) are on those databases? The big three are Academic Search Premier (4,600), Business Search Premier (2,300) and MasterFILE Premier (1,700). You likely have either EBSCOhost or a similar set of databases purchased by your state library system.

At YouTube you or I can view several brief tutorials: Introduction to EBSCOhost, EBSCOhost Basic Search, Browsing Subject terms in EBSCOhost Databases, and Business Source – Advanced Searching on EBSCOhost. Afterwards the best way to learn is to make an appointment with a reference librarian at your public library. Tell him or her your topic, and you can learn where to look, and get suggestions for better search terms. Searching often seems like trying to drink from a fire hose, so you have to narrow the scope.  

For example, suppose I wanted to do the electronic equivalent of browsing through a stack of recent issues from Vital Speeches of the Day. I first could pick the database Academic Search Premier, and Select Advanced Search. In Select a Field, pick SO Journal Name and enter Vital Speeches of the Day. Then click Limit your results for Full Text. To the right of Refine Results point to Relevance and change to instead use Date Newest. Then I later can select some other fields to search by: Subject, Author, Title, etc. One of the speeches I found in the February 2013 issue was Barack Obama’s speech at the funeral of his inspiration and colleague, Hawaii’s Senator Daniel K. Inouye, titled Freedom and Dignity Were Not Abstractions.  

Back on February 24, 2015 I blogged about How to do a better job of speech research than the average Toastmaster (by using your friendly local public and state university libraries). In that post I covered the following five items:

1]  Start with your public library.

2]  You don’t have to reinvent the wheel.

3]  Learn how to fish for information.

4]  For even more depth, visit your state university library.

5]  Where can I find out even more about research?  

Now you can better use Google or Bing (and other tools). On July 8, 2010 I blogged about Web search: 10 strategies for various occasions. They are: Guess and Go, A Shot in the Dark, Bingo, Everything But the Kitchen Sink, Take a Big Bite, A Little Help From Our Friends, Pearl Growing, Find Someone Who Cares, Let the Fish Swim to You, and No Stone Unturned. One of those, Find Someone Who Cares, is to interview an Expert. On August 24, 2009 I blogged about the Joy of research: Answers may not come from where or who you might expect.

How much research is enough? That depends. On January 24, 2020 I blogged about A humorous reminder that you don’t have to be the world expert on a topic in order to speak. If you are speaking to twenty people in a Toastmasters club for six minutes, then you may not need much depth. But if you are doing an 18-minute TED talk you will want to go way deeper. On February 4, 2019 I blogged about Reliable places to find information for your speeches. In that post I discussed using some other tools you might find at a state university library, and elsewhere (like databases for finding about opposing viewpoints on controversial topics, and the planetary card catalog WorldCat).

Back on July 5, 2014 I blogged about how Reference librarians are the heroes of research. In that post I discussed how one got me an extremely obscure handbook via interlibrary loan. Some old books are digitized at Google Books (many with that pesky Snippet View) or are in the Internet Archive. On January 10, 2020 I blogged about How old are brief (3 to 7 minute) speech formats? There I mentioned finding two books from back in 1886 with Five-Minute Sermons for Low Masses on All Sundays of the Year. The oldest book I found so far at the Internet Archive is by John Bulwer - Chirologia or the Natural Language of the Hand from back in 1644. It is about gestures and is discussed in an article at the Public Domain Review.  

You need to maintain a skeptical attitude when doing research. On October 9, 2017 I blogged that It must be true, since I read it in a book. That post discussed reading a claim in a cookbook that iodine was added to salt as an anticaking agent – which is nonsense. In local public libraries you can find over a dozen books about homeopathy, although on January 6, 2016 I blogged about how According to Consumer Reports, homeopathy is an emperor with no clothes.

This blog post also is a handout for the February 26, 2020 meeting of the Pioneer Toastmasters Club in Boise, Idaho with a theme of Finding speech topics and doing research.