Gifts of Speech: Women’s Speeches from around the World (GOS) was created in October, 1996 by Liz Linton, a college librarian, with a grant she received from the Cochran Library, Sweet Briar College, Sweet Briar, Virginia. This site was developed to “preserve and create access to speeches by contemporary, influential women from around the world”. The home page of this site describes their latest acquisition of all 24 Nobel Lectures by female laureates. (This digitizing project will continue into 1999.) Linton has received funding for this project up until June, 1999.
The content of the site’s speeches vary radically in topics, speakers, geography, and time spans. In the introduction, the term “contemporary” is used but not defined. In the chronological list, speeches date back to 1871. No true sense of what contemporary means to the selection of speeches is determined. Perhaps simply stating that speeches from a certain date will be included would be sufficient to end my questions. The initial 74 speeches were collected by a cumbersome means of actually writing to 85 known famous women and asking for copies of their speeches and permission to put them on this site for common use. Women were contacted in the USA, Canada, UK, Kenya, Ireland, and Sri Lanka. Replies were received from the “most generous and optimistic women in the world”. Why these particular women or these specific countries were selected is not explained in the site’s FAQs. The author does claim that there is a certain amount of serendipity to the selection of speeches available at this site; and this is apparent in the speeches made available. If this site is to expand, I would like to see a more defined set of criteria for inclusion so that researchers would know when to use this site. Perhaps further historical content would also make it a more valuable research tool.
The GOS main page allows for simple browsing activities that access speeches by a keyword search, a list of Featured Speakers, a complete alphabetical listing of speakers, and a chronological list of speeches. All points of access are easy to use and require little or no knowledge of searching. A very recent feature (January 1999) is the addition of a keyword search function. This basic keyword search allows a certain amount of subject access to the collection which it lacked last year. This function allows the user to limit to the long or short format of the speech; unfortunately, these are not defined. It also allows researchers to limit terms to any or all terms. It is unknown if truncation or Boolean searching is allowed. A simple help page would answer these questions. To continue developing the content of the site, speeches are submitted for inclusion by e‐mailing, faxing, or posting submissions to Liz Linton. Submissions from “prominent professions, entrepreneurs, scientists, activists, civic leaders, scholars or notable artists” are encouraged; but speeches from students are not. Speeches of deceased authors have been taken from published sources which are, however, not cited with the speech.
The remaining links on the Homepage lead to the GOS Bookshop, a how to cite page, a Women’s Web Ring leading to other potential speech sites, a Nobel prize page detailing lecture information, a list of awards and their FAQ page. Among the various awards listed are the Scout Report for Social Sciences 1998, Nielsen Web Sites Bronze Award 1999, and Encyclopaedia Britannica eBlast 4‐star (superior award) 1998.
The time and effort spent on this site is obvious ‐ a work of dedication by the author. I would recommend using this site to supplement the already existing print resources for finding speeches on certain topics or by certain individuals (i.e. Speech Indexes). Hopefully, with continued funding, this site will develop into a fully‐fledged research tool for people interested in women’s studies.
