A Concrete Example of Saving Time by Consulting a Librarian
One of my beat areas, if you will, is numbers and statistics related to my employer. Most of the sources I use are online, but if you don’t know where to go to find the reports, they’re very difficult to find. Navigating the world of institutional data and institutional research is not easy, especially for people not familiar with numerical and statistical sources related to colleges and universities. A reporter could spend a very long time playing with search engines and search terms to find the numbers or reports or she could call me. I know some numbers off the top of my head, have pages of numbers surrounding my desk, and am familiar with sources for many other stats and numbers related to the campus. I’ve even compiled some numbers that are reported separately so that reporters don’t have to do the math themselves. It usually takes me less than five minutes to give someone a number over the telephone. (Remember the telephone? It can be a much more powerful tool than a search engine.) I am also very familiar with which numbers don’t exist and can often end someone’s wild goose chase for those mystery numbers.
Sometimes I get inquiries beginning with “I’ve been searching the Internet for hours and I can’t find …” Often I wonder why someone’s searched so long and so hard without results before consulting another source.
