I don't think I've ever used a librarian to help me find environmental information, probably since I work with it all day long and have learned where to find most of what I need.
But I want to put in a plug for librarians and libraries generally in this regard. As Steve alluded to, and as Howard Fox said very well in his 9/18 posting, the internet has real liabilities. First, searching it is a monstrous, unpredictable and often highly tedious process. It sorely lacks the classification and order that libraries bring to information, and that enable it to be searched in a targeted and efficient way. Second, vast amounts of the available content are junk. As someone once said, the irony of the information age is that it brings new respectability to uninformed opinion. Again, skilled librarians have the ability to weed out stuff to some degree. Third, a whole lot of information simply isn't on the internet, and may never be. I'm concerned that we're fast moving to a time where information that is only available in print is effectively lost or ignored. Sort of like music that's only available on 78s, only much worse. Libraries offer a way (and some guidance) to access non-web information. The internet is an unparalled way of making information universally and instantly accessible. But it's not the only useful repository of information and probably never will be.
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