Chapter 7: Researching Your Speech

Keep Track of Your Sources

One of the most important (and unappreciated) steps in the speech preparation process is maintaining complete and accurate records of your research sources. When you prepare your speech outline, your instructor will expect you to properly cite the sources of all the research you will use in your presentation. If you have lost track of the sources of your evidence or have incomplete citations, it will be very difficult to go back and find this information later. Furthermore, if you cannot cite the source of a piece of information, you cannot use that material in your speech.

Therefore, it is essential that you find and keep full citations for all research sources you may use in your speech. The citation contains information about the source author and the location of your evidence: it’s the academic equivalent of a map to your source. When a source is cited properly, it should be easy for another person to find the original source, whether it is in the library or online. Your instructor will have a citation format that you need to follow; be sure you know what information is required so you can make note of it immediately. Typically, the following information is needed:

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Name of the author and her or his credentials
Title of the article or book chapter if the work appears in a newspaper, a periodical, an anthology, or online
Source (name of the book, magazine, or newspaper)
Date of the publication
Volume number (for periodicals)
Publisher and city of publication (for books)
Page number where the evidence appears
URL for Internet sources

Many computer-based library indexes now allow you to export the citations for your research sources by cutting and pasting the citation into a Word file. This is a very efficient way to keep track of source citations. If you are not sure how to do this, check with a research librarian.

You also need a reliable system for matching each citation to the evidence you obtain. However you choose to keep a copy of your evidence (note cards, downloads, photocopies), be sure that you also immediately record the evidence’s citation information. One of the most common mistakes our students make is to assume that the URL that appears on the page when Internet evidence is printed out is sufficient for a citation. Please note: it is not sufficient! In this case, you also need to find and record the name of the author of the information, his or her credentials, and the date of the information.

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