1. Date: Fri, 7 Oct 2005 16:02:34 -0500 (From a midwestern news librarian)

Dear Barbara:

Here are two that you won't find online (I think) --

 1. How many multiple homicides (three or more victims) have occurred in northeast Indiana since 1968?

Answer: The list was assembled from an interlocking series of clip files about homicides or the people who do them. Every time we would write about one triple or quadruple homicide it would remind us of another. So we were able to make a list of about a dozen qualifying homicides just by that method. Not glamorous, but it worked.

2. What were the election results (vote totals) for mayor in all Fort Wayne mayoral elections since 1900?

Answer: The list was assembled from our own microfilm. As a newspaper of record, we are in the habit of saying Candidate X got 123,456 votes and Candidate Y got 120,032.

Both of these searches live on not only in electronic archives but on our intranet, in case anybody needs to know in the future.

Barbara:

From my more than 18 years of doing research in the Washington Bureau Library of NBC News, the best example of a simple question that wasn't:

"Find me Ken Lay's ex-wife's phone number." (You remember Enron, I trust?)

All they knew was that he had an ex-wife.

1- Lexis-Nexis:  Houston Chronicle to find her name and dates etc.

2- Lexis-Nexis:  property and voting records, luckily Texas records are available.

3- Find co-owned properties and gleaned her maiden name.

4- Find owned properties using maiden name, leading me to a new marriage and a new name.

5- Searched property and voting records under her new married name for most recent address.

6- Used Autotrack as a second source to confirm the phone number for her new name.

She and her new husband owned several properties, evidently rentals, a little deduction was needed.

Another example: 

The favorite "reference question" of the fellow who hired me at NBC (and one of my better friends) is "How many days in a Metric month?"

I think that shoots down the idea of "no such thing as a stupid question."

Barbara,

The crime reporters here consult the "Iowa Courts Online" site all the time to check case records, verify DOB, etc.: http://www.iowacourts.state.ia.us/ESAWebApp/DefaultFrame

As an example, search on the name "Jesse R. Nunez," choose the 2nd link from the top, and click on Criminal Charges/Disposition to see details.

Hi Barbara,

I was asked for the number of City of Salem employees and the number of State of Oregon employees working in Marion and Polk counties.  I checked the city's and the state's and the state's agencies' web sites.  I tried a couple of search engines--

http://www.devilfinder.com/   and   http://generic.a9.com/  with no luck.  Checked our archives.  Then decided it might be easier to contact the city and state HR departments.  It was.  This was yesterday.  Have a nice weekend. 

Barbara:

Present to me ONE table with the top 25 exporters of ALL kinds of pesticides (common names as well as manufacturers’ names as well as chemical names) to Middle Eastern Countries, listing type of pesticide, amount, exporting harbour and exporting company, ordered by country name, then amount exported then company name. Just an example. I hope. Search, print time: 20 minutes.

[Semonche's Note: I've requested this researcher's database(s) of choice and his research strategies. The researcher graciously complied. His response follows. Note also that Dialog is available on this campus only to grad students in the School of Library and Information Science. After reading this response, I think that you can understand why.]

Date: Tue, 11 Oct 2005 09:43:13 +0200

Actually, the example is much more complicated than the answer. And I am just a simple librarian with a unhealthy interest in the Art of Information.

Examine Dialog.
Examine the database directory.
Examine the search language.

That's it. If you did, you will have found that there is a database called Piers Imports & Exports, which will give you data on which goods are im/eported from which US harbours by which company in which quantities to which other harbour.

With another database (Beilsteins, or CA, or Derwent chemistry resource, or whatever fact base), look up all the synonyms for pesticides (search for pesticides and find all SYnonyms. "Catch" these with the Dialog
command MAP. Save the results in a temporary storage space (for free) with so you don't have to type it in again.

For instance:
? b 390
s pesticides/na
? map sy t s1

Then, go to PIERS (watch it! expensive!), execute the search with Dialogs command EXS. Then, instead of simply typing the records, create a table with just the data you want in the order you want, depending on
the question/requirement. Use Dialogs SORT command like

? sort s1/all/cn,lb,co

and Dialogs REPORT command to create the report, like

? report s2/all/cn,lb,co

That's it. It comes with a price though. Hope this helps.

Barbara:

If someone wants to be a foreign reporter, (s)he needs to remember that many countries (and probably even a majority of nations) don't have the Web as well-developed as the US, and a lot of research in and about those countries has to be conducted offline.

Hi Barbara,

I can't think of specific searches, but in general when tracking down people I sense that we're sometimes getting the request after they've been spending too much time unsuccessfully on Google.  If someone has a common name or no reason to have done anything that would put them on the Web it can be a nightmare, so you need to have more information to go on.  The first thing we might do would be a news database search (Nexis) to see if anything has been written that might indicate a hometown, or previous hometown, or an age--just some piece of information other than their name.  Then it's on to one of our fee-based public records databases that can connect the dots much better than any other sources--with previous addresses, age ranges, asset ownership, etc.  I have to brag that our research center is quite talented in this area and most of our users know to come to us first when trying to track someone down, but--not to cast aspersions--with the younger folks I sometimes think we get the request post-Google.  The good news is after we find their person quickly and accurately, we tend to get repeat customers!

Hi there Barbara

I had a rather interesting request a few years ago:

I had to find out the overall cost of growing organic vegetables for a family of four, compared to buying the same organic vegetables from the green grocer. It would obviously include setting up the garden, organic sprays, cost of plants or seeds and other equipment needed.

I couldn't find anything on the internet, although as that was a few years ago, things may have changed. It's not exactly a news-breaking research query, but I distinctly remember spending many hours trying to find it! Also here at the Waikato Times, I don't have access to many (well, any!) databases.

[Semonche's note: I have a request into this news researcher to tell me where she did find the information requested. Here is her response:]

Date: Tue, 11 Oct 2005 09:17:46 +1300

Hi Barbara

I actually ended up contacting a professor at a very small tertiary provider (and I can't for the life of me remember where!) He was the head of the horticulture department and had a special interest in organics and
permaculture.

He had access to a report which went half way to answering our question - the report compared the cost of growing organic vegetables compared to buying them, but it was a British report. So we never found anything local. Unfortunately I have no idea where he got this report from, only that it certainly wasn't available via Google!

[Semonche's note: This library was imaginative in locating the information. My only suggestion is that the librarian should have documented the exact source of the report. Never know when that information will need to be verified.]

Hi, Barbara:

1.  An editor came and ask for the correct title of a musical.  She believed the title was "This is your army" and written by Irving Berlin.  She has tried using the Internet to no avail.    So she thought that the news research center would have some resources that would answer her question.   We looked in several books.  In fact we had a book about Irving Berlin and found the title there - "This is the army, Mr. Jones".   We verified it in another source.   

2.   A features reporter needed to find a Yiddish phrase.   He also had tried the Internet and found nothing.   So he came to us.    We had some Yiddish phrase books which provided the answer.  

These are some of searches that people think should be readily answered by the Internet but not always.