[FIND] Expertise - Librarian/Investigator/Salander

Forget what you think you know about librarians. Sure, there are some bespectacled, hair-up-in-a-bun nerdy types still out there, holdovers from the days of Dewey Decimal and card catalogs. But today's hard-core researchers are as likely to sport tattoos and piercings as a group of brainy Suicide Girls, and they are not to be trifled with or in any way underestimated. (Think Lisbeth Salander.)

In a story in the winter 2009 edition of American Libraries titled "The Bunheads are Dead," Ken Haycock and Carla Garner thoroughly dispel the myth of stodgy shushers. Today's librarian is an information analyst, a freedom of information and protection of privacy officer, an information broker. They are highly trained, badass researchers and they likely hold at least a master's degree in library and information sciences (MLIS). 

According to Haycock and Garner, the MLIS students, "...learn higher-order analytical skills for assessing community information needs (whether for a municipality or in the private sector), developing collections of resources to meet those needs, designing programs and services to exploit those resources, and assessing the effectiveness and impact of implemented services." They are, in short, the people you need to access, analyze, and understand information. 

A professional investigator, like a librarian, should be comfortable with in-depth research techniques. Not only should they have access to public records database services, which are necessary, but they should be on a first name basis with the staff at various public offices. They should have the Tax Assessor's phone number on speed dial, have a person in the Planning and Zoning Office, and know the lady at the front desk at the Register of Deeds.

 

And when they have to research in an unfamiliar jusrisdiction, they must have a working knowledge of the process. It's much easier to get information from someone if they think you know the ropes. Your professional investigator will maintain contacts with other professionals in the information industry as well—corporate librarians, investigative journalists, reference librarians, etc.

 

Lisbeth Salander, the fictional bedragoned badass, offers a fantastic example of how this work should be done: Skill, resources, and contacts. Kow how, know where, and know who.

 

Like a librarian, Salander and your professional investigator don't have to know everything, they just have to have an analytical mind, access to resources, and know people who can find/exploit the things they can't.