Published literature lets you reach beyond your own knowledge and experience and can be a valuable resource for supporting material for your speech. If you’re giving a speech on hip-hop music, for example, you’re likely to find some great material in the pages of a magazine like Vibe. If you’re looking for studies on mental health issues affecting emergency personnel after the Boston Marathon bombings, you might search through newspaper articles or scholarly journals such as the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA).

Most current publications are available in searchable databases in libraries; some can even be accessed online or via a tablet or smartphone apps (though you may have to pay a fee to download complete articles). Such databases give you access to a wealth of stored information. The Internet Movie Database (www.imdb.com), for instance, is a great example of a commonly used database, and its comprehensive information on film, television, and video games is entirely free.

Another type of secondary resource is a directory. Directories are created and maintained by people rather than automatically by computers. Because human editors compile them, directories—like the American Library Directory Online— often return fewer links but higher-quality results. Directories guide you to the main page of a Web site organized within a wider subject category. You can also access useful literature through library gateways—collections of databases and information sites arranged by subject, generally reviewed and recommended by experts (usually librarians). These gateway collections assist in your research and reference needs because they identify suitable academic pages on the Web. In addition to scholastic resources, many library gateways include links to specialty search engines for biographies, quotations, atlases, maps, encyclopedias, and trivia.