COMM 2341: Oral Interpretation

"I know it when I see it." But what about finding it? Locating prose can be a frustrating task if you don't already know exactly what you want. And if you DO know exactly what you want, does the Library have it? My suggestion is if you do think you know exactly what you want, see if the ASU Library has it as part of its collection by using RamCat. (You could also look check to see if the Tom Green County Library has it.)

If you know the title of the entire book or journal, do a search in RamCat to see if we have it, and if it's a journal, then see if we have the issue that your piece is in. If the piece is by a famous person, you can do an author search [last name (comma) first name] to see if we have an anthology of his/her collected works, or another source that has the works of that author. You can also do a phrase search for the title of the piece with those words in exactly that order.

Finally, if you can't find the piece you want, be open to trying to find something else (see the box below). You can also ask a Librarian for help to see if they can locate it!

You're not alone! Most students don't already know what they want. However, finding a good piece of prose without sifting through EVERYTHING can be difficult. The trick (in my opinion) is to search using terms and techniques that will minimize your time researching, although your search might still be somewhat time consuming. Remember, you aren't just looking for a piece, you then need to actually read the piece to see if it works, and if not, find another!

Shortcuts:

• Search the web to see if you can find references to examples of prose you can use. Here is a list of pieces that you MIGHT be able to use that are tried and true, although your selection still needs to fit into the course requirements. Here is one site that has a number of pieces. We will not have many Dave Barry or Woody Allen non-movie/theatre pieces, but there are some good ones here. https://gavilan.libguides.com/c.php?g=845602&p=6045295 . Remember, you still need to see if the Library has a book or magazine with one of these!
• Searching the ASU Library's catalog, RamCat, to see what we have available. If you're open to possibilities, try some keyword searches looking for indications that a piece may be prose. To effectively do this, it is good to know a few things about using RamCat.

1. When you search for a title, leave off the first word if its an "a", "an", or "the".
2. Leave out punctuation such as colons, commas, and apostrophes.
3. You can search for the first part of multiple words by truncating. For example you can find both the words literary and literature by searching for liter? . The ? is the truncator in RamCat, you will find everything that starts with those letters. You will also get other things which might not work so well, such as "literal" that have the same first characters. (BTW, the truncator in U-Search is * the asterisk.) Note that the truncator in U-Search is different - it's an * .
4. The Library uses subject headings to categorize books that share a common topic. If you know of specific words that are used in library subject headings, you can hopefully find some relevant works.
5. Play around! Don't commit! Find multiple books/ebooks that might have good pieces. Because of Covid-19, you can't pull the books yourself, or even go to the second floor. You will need to ask a person at the Circulation Desk to pull the books for you. Don't just get only one or two unless you are SURE that they will have something you can use, it's better to be safe than sorry.

• Possible words to search for in combination with each other in RamCat are: prose, liter?, essays, short stories, reader, anthology, narratives, Texas, women, author names. Examples: Texas and essays; prose and liter?, stephen king and short stories, magazine articles, American essays
• Word to possibly avoid if getting too much, but only if you've tried without avoiding the word: criticism. The problem is criticism is talking ABOUT a work and sometimes won't have the work itself. On the other hand, other times the work is included.
• ONCE YOU FIND YOUR PIECE, CHECKOUT, PRINT OR SAVE IT RIGHT AWAY. Even eBooks usually have only one copy, someone else could decide to use the same resource and you may not be able to get back in!