My Top 3 is a weekly post where I count down three things I love in a random category. This week, we’re looking at my top three librarian tricks.

One of the best parts of my job is that I never know what people will ask at the reference desk. I learn a lot this way. Honestly, I probably learned more about doing research while on the desk than I did in my master’s program. It’s just the kind of job where you learn best by doing. A class might be able to tell you where certain kinds of information are located, but getting exactly what someone wants and needs only comes through experience.

Doing research is like a scavenger hunt. You need to pull little bits from here and there to complete the entire quest. Sometimes it’s as simple as tracking down a data point in an obvious database. Other times, it’s finding several needles in different haystacks spread all over the place. It takes persistence and patience.

Research is not a straightforward process. There are a lot of starts and stops, back tracking and loops, and then random surges forward when you get on the right path. In my almost two decades (*shivers at math*) as an academic librarian, I’ve learned a lot of basic tricks that make research easier.

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