“My daily experience as a reference librarian is that most researchers, especially those moving into a new subject area, are very much in the position of the Six Blind Men of India in the fable, who were asked to describe an elephant. One grabbed a leg and said, ‘The elephant is like a tree’; one touched the side and said, ‘The elephant is like a wall’; one found the tail and said, ‘The elephant is like a rope’; and so on with the tusk (‘like a spear’), the trunk (‘like a hose’), and the ear (‘like a fan’). Everyone latched on to something quickly, and each thought he was perceiving the whole animal. No one grasped the extent of the other parts, and no one perceived how the many parts fit together. Finding ‘something quickly’ in each case proved to be seriously misleading.”