THE ROBERT W. WHITAKER ARCHIVE

Peter is still ragging me about finding a book.

This could be useful.

The problem is that most of the time when I tell people first steps in finding things they think I am making fun of them, because what I do is so simple.

That's not true. Finding an obscure fact in zoology is fairly easy. You just call a zoology department.

But finding something that "everybody knows" can be very tricky.

I was known for finding things when I got to the Reagan Admininistration, so, like all my bosses, my new boss decided to try me out. He wanted to know a quote from Shakespeare.

I called three or four local library reference services, told them who I was, and they went to work hard. They did not find the quote. What they found out was something MUCH harder:

There was no such quote.

Here's the kicker: Nobody else would have been able to find that out without days of work. My boss was, as they all were, very impressed. It also reenforced my practical Ben Franklin image.

BUT remember that I DID this myself. If someone had come to me and asked me how to do it and I had told a major appointee of the Reagan Administration he should call the local library, he would have been grossly insulted.

In the internet age, our problem is telling the damned machine that we want something very simple. We do NOT want to buy pimple removers.

The advantage of having an institutional memory like me around is that I spent decades finding HUMANS with information.

Peter wants to know if a book exists. He needs to call several bookstores and ask if they have a book search.

You do NOT have to promise to buy a book to get a full search done. Most of these searches are for out-of-print and hard-to-find books.

Your library will also do it for you

It takes a while.

Most book searches also have a list of actual books, books that exist or existed, on hand. When you are dealing with a fake book this is very useful.

Peter's question touches on an interesting sidelight: Almost everything under the sun, and a lot that the sun never saw, is discussed somewhere in the Congressional Record. Finding it is an art in itself. If your local library doesn't have the CR, your local college will. But the library can find out where one is.

Never forget the interlibrary loan service. Your library can get you almost any book that still exists. Even if it doesn't exist, the microfilm archives, world-wide, to which your library can get access, are awesome.

Be very pleasant and as unbending as a California redwood.

Elizabeth, do you have any more hints?

It is funny people think my hints are insulting because they are so "simple."

I remember one of the top political fundraisers of all time whom I knew well, Richard Viguerie, addressed a group explaining the basics of direct mail. Richard was a poor Texas cajun who came up in the world, so when he discovered how "simple" direct mail was, he honestly didn't think it took a genius to do what he did.

He said he had more business than he could handle, so he would just tell his conservative audience how to do it.

I know he meant it, because I think the same way. But I have learned that simple is not simple.

So Viguerie went on for about an hour with short hints he had learned by statistical analysis of responses to direct mail:

Long letters with short sentences.

How YOU can help.

Specify how much money you are trying to raise.

How to get a list of uninvolved sponsors with big names.

And on and on and on for a full hour.

Willis Carto could give you days of this.

He thinks it's simple, too.

Then Viguerie finished with, "So as you see it's not some kind of science. It's all very simple."

When he came down from the podium I said, "Richard, you don't know it but what you just told people was, 'Look, it's very simple. Here's Volume One.'"

Everything that works is based on something that seems simple once you grasp it.

But with nanotechnology, if we could grasp molecules, making ANYTHING would be simple.

"Once you grasp it" is a hell of a modifier.

It is the charlatan and the priesthood that seeks complication and arcane theories. As I cannot point out too often:

"If you babble in English you are a fool. If you babble in Latin you are a scholar."