The Lost Art of Research

I learned how to research in grad school. Actual library, actual computer terminals, actual different keywords and different ways of asking a question depending on what I was trying to find. And I feel like that skill has gotten lost somewhere in the last twenty years. When everything’s at our fingertips instantly, people stop knowing how to look things up. They just post the question on social media and hope somebody with more followers than sense hands them an answer.

Here’s the thing though. Everybody’s different. What worked for the person who answered your Instagram story question might not work for you at all. You need more than one answer. You need to see a few different approaches and figure out what actually fits your situation.

And research isn’t just for big important things. It’s not just gallery submissions and grant applications. It’s how to search your own email inbox. How to resize a photo. How to attach an image without the file being enormous. How to clean the lens on your camera. How to fix your dishwasher when it stops draining. It’s literally everything. All of it takes is a little bit of digging and a little bit of acceptance that you don’t already know, and that’s fine, you’re allowed to not know things.

This is what makes me independent. I don’t rely on other people for every little thing because I know how to go find out. Now, there’s plenty I don’t know how to do and don’t want to learn. I am never, ever going to learn to code. It’s not happening, I don’t have the bandwidth on top of everything else I’m juggling. So I outsource that. But here’s the distinction that matters to me. I don’t outsource the question. I outsource the work. I research first so I actually know what I need before I hand it to someone else. That way I can tell a web developer exactly what I want instead of just going “I need, like, a database thing?” It saves everybody time and it gives them a clearer job to do.

So how do you actually research well.

There’s basically a cycle to it, even if you’ve never thought about it that way. Define your actual question. Do a first pass search. Find the materials that seem useful. Evaluate them. Take notes. Compare what you’re finding across sources. Then actually act on it. That’s it. That’s the whole thing librarians have been teaching forever, it’s just not a one-and-done search, it’s a process you repeat.

Start by turning your vague question into a real one. “How do I document my artwork” is too fuzzy to search well. “What resolution and lighting do galleries want for submission photos” gets you somewhere real.

Think of your keywords as handles. The more specific they are, the easier it is to actually grab onto something useful. Build a little list of related terms too, synonyms, tools, years, formats, and watch how much better your results get.

“Instagram Story” becomes “Instagram Story add link 2026” or “Instagram Story text accessibility,” depending on what you’re actually trying to do.

“Find a gallery” becomes “contemporary galleries Los Angeles open calls” or “gallery submission policy Southern California” or “artist representation research gallery roster.”

“Artwork database” becomes “artist inventory spreadsheet fields” or “artwork inventory numbering system.”

Even something as ordinary as “dishwasher not draining” gets a hundred times more useful once you add the brand and model number and the specific symptom.

Quotation marks around an exact phrase narrow things down, like “artwork inventory template.” Adding site:instagram.com or site:help.instagram.com to a search pulls results from just that place. You can also exclude a word if the same junk keeps showing up.

Don’t stop at one source, especially for anything technical, financial, legal, or safety related. I try to check the official source first, the actual gallery’s submission page, the actual software documentation, the actual manufacturer’s instructions. Then a credible explainer, a library guide, an established publication, someone who actually knows what they’re talking about. Then real lived experience, YouTube tutorials, artist forums, people who’ve actually done the thing. And ideally a second source that either backs up the first one or complicates it, because that’s often where the real answer lives.

Before you trust what you find, ask a few quick questions. Is this recent enough to still be true, because an Instagram feature tutorial from three years ago is basically fiction at this point. Does it actually match my situation, my platform, my medium, my device. Who made this and why should I believe them. Does it show its work, does it demonstrate the process or cite something, or is it just someone’s confident opinion. And what’s this person actually trying to do here, teach me something, sell me something, or just get clicks.

There’s actually a name for this, the CRAAP test. Currency, relevance, authority, accuracy, purpose. I learned it in library school and it still holds up completely, even for something as small as figuring out whether a Wix tutorial is still accurate.

And yes, use AI for this. I use Claude constantly for exactly this kind of thing, generating keywords I wouldn’t have thought of, organizing a mess of information, translating jargon I don’t know yet, turning a fuzzy problem into an actual checklist. But treat it as a research assistant, not the final word. Ask for sources. Go check them. Especially when money, health, legal stuff, or a big technical decision is on the line.

Keep some kind of record too. Doesn’t have to be fancy. For each question, jot down the actual problem in one sentence, the search terms that worked, the strongest links or videos you found, your own notes in your own words, what you decided, and what happened after. That last part matters more than people think, because six months later you will not remember if that solution actually worked.

For my own practice this has basically turned into a living reference system. I’ve got a tab for galleries and open calls, one for artwork documentation, one for Wix and store stuff, one for photo and file management, one for vendors and people I might hire. Every time I solve something once, it goes in there, so I never have to solve it twice.

Research the question. Outsource the labor. Know enough to ask for what you actually need instead of just kind of gesturing at a problem and hoping someone understands.

We need to keep learning how to figure things out. Not because we have to do everything ourselves, but because knowing how to find an answer is its own kind of freedom.