Need research help?

I Love Research!!

Of course I do. I’m a librarian. :D

I wonder if there are authors who don’t do their own research? I know there are plenty of writers who get help from librarians, and I’ve even seen librarians thanked on Acknowledgements pages. As far as I can tell, that’s for in-person research.

I wonder if there are writers who would ask a librarian to help with online research? I know there are dissertation writers who do that. I’ve spent plenty of time gathering peer-reviewed journal articles for the faculty at our college, either for doctoral dissertations, reviews of literature for their own journal articles, or curriculum development.

But only once has a writer asked me to research anything to be used in a work of fiction. One of the members of my writing group needed a disease – uniformly fatal, without any obvious signs or symptoms, no treatment available.

This is a toughie. It could be a brain aneurysm, but the author needed a definite end point, and aneurysms can burst tomorrow, in twenty years, or never. Anything else would only be symptom-free in the early stages. ALS, or Lou Gehrig’s disease, is a possibility, but the author needed a quicker progression than that. I suggested Creutzfeld-Jakob disease, the human equivalent of mad cow, but she said the character is Hindu. So no good. She thought the most promising idea might be a chronic hepatitis caused by a chemical exposure – symptoms would occur soon, but not immediately. She’s considering her options.

I don’t know if there are any writers out there who hate research, but if you’re one, give me a shout. I can help. :D