Research the Topic
When you are deciding whether to accept an invitation to speak, be sure you have enough time to do sufficient research, especially if you have only a superficial grasp of the subject. Even if you are considered an expert, you may find that new discoveries, events, and analyses by other scholars have changed the quantity of information that needs to be reviewed. You also need to take into consideration the level of education about the issues that members of the audience have. If you are giving a ten-minute report on the history of the federal electoral college for the Women's Club, the amount of detail you will need to convey will be very different from what you will want to know to make a half-hour presentation at a political science class.
Specialists in a topic may have a narrow and biased viewpoint, but you want to listen to what they say because a strong opinion can lead to an analysis that would otherwise be overlooked. Just be aware of the difference between relatively unbiased reference material and scholarly opinions and note who seems to make the best arguments and where they disagree.
The reference desk at a library can be invaluable to find reliable information in the print world. The Internet, wonderful though it is, is a virtual haystack that is difficult to search through to find anything useful at times. Books do not get into print without rigorous checking by authors and editors, in order to avoid factual errors and unintentional plagiarism. Reference librarians have lots of experience to know where to confirm obscure facts, find helpful statistics, or pin down a quote you cannot find through your own efforts. Libraries carry many volumes that are not online, are only available by subscription or at a price you do not want to pay, or that are out of print and not available to buy even from the largest used-book sources. The industry reference section of any library can be especially useful.
Make notes about both the content and the source when you research, whether online or off, so that if your assertion is challenged or you want to look up the source again, you will know where to go. Use 3 × 5 cards for each group of related facts from one source, then put them into alphabetical order by name of volume or site. Be sure you have a sense of priority about the information you collect — almost as bad as doing too little research is doing so much that you become lost in a sea of facts that you cannot readily organize.
As a supplement to the world of ink and librarians, the Virtual Reference Desk at
