We’ve all gotten so accustomed to having the Internet at our fingertips no matter where we are, that it’s easy to forget that there are other resources available to us.
One of the benefits of going to the library and looking things up in actual books, is that in the process of doing your research, you may find ancillary information that fits in even better with your needs. Internet research can be almost too direct, at times: ask a specific enough question and you will only receive its specific answer. Sometimes a broader search can highlight options that might be a better fit for your story, or can serve as springboard to launch your ideas or solve something that might have you stuck.
I think that, these days, we’re also conditioned away from asking questions to real live people. Either we’re afraid we’ll look stupid, or we’re too concerned about being a bother, or we convince ourselves (usually for one of those reasons I just mentioned) that we’ll be turned away.
But the reality is that there are people who not only enjoy helping others to find the information that they need, but who have chosen to make a career out of it. Experts in a field will almost always be gracious to a writer who expresses a genuine interest in writing accurately about that field. Librarians are equally gracious about guiding you to the resources you need.
Stern “silence please” stereotypes aside, librarians are, on the whole, friendly and curious people. In my experience, if you present them a challenge and they don’t know how to help you, they will become genuinely interested in finding the answer. They may even adopt your quest for information as their own. They’ll be happy to continue assisting until they’ve tracked down satisfactory resources for you to continue your search, if not an actual result.
When you’re researching, remember to look beyond the Internet to other sources: books, living experts on a subject, and information specialists. Sometimes the network can put too much data at your fingertips, and other resources might provide a faster — or more interesting — path to what you need.
- Guest Blogger: David Sakmyster on The Joys of Research (80.3%)
- Making Grammar Interesting (21.4%)
- Style Guides (21.4%)
- Phraseology (21.4%)
- A different kind of search engine (19.7%)
Comments on this entry are closed.
{ 2 trackbacks }