Transferable Skills?

A friend called tonight, asking for help to find elusive information in an online genealogy database. She had looked and looked (her husband, an IT professional, looked and looked too), and could not find it, though she just knew it should be there.

I logged into that same database, and promptly found the item in question. So I walked her through the algorithm I used. Aha! she said. How do you do that?

Uh, gee. I don't know. I've just played around in these databases so much that I know what's in them, how they work, what questions get what kinds of answers. I know when to switch from one database to the other to follow a hot lead, from one service to the other, to keep multiple windows open and follow trails until they meet up or end.

Here's what I hope... that this skill has portability, that Lexis/Nexus and Westlaw will work in roughly the same way. I like looking for things (information things, not missing keys and eyeglasses). I hope looking for law things will be just as fun.

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