Everybody's an Expert: Finding Business Experts Online

In a web-enabled world where everyone sounds authoritative and where expertise may be devalued, locating a real expert can seem more impossible than finding the proverbial needle in a haystack. When anyone can claim expertise and when so many people do, it almost seems as if everyone is an expert!

This

is what Andrew Keen bemoans in his book The Cult of the Amateur: How Today's Internet Is Killing Our Culture (the subtitle is expanded in the British version to How Today's Internet Is Killing Our Culture and Assaulting Our Economy) and on his blog (http://andrewkeen.typepad.com). As a Web 2.0 skeptic, he's no fan of user-generated content unless that creator is educated, trained, skilled, knowledgeable, or otherwise qualified as an expert to contribute content in digital form.

It sometimes appears to librarians that in the past we had perfect reference works. We worked and lived in a mythical age when all published reference tools were fair, true, and comprehensive. Yet anyone who has spent time looking at reference works knows that there was no such time. Perhaps because there were fewer written sources in more stable formats, there was an illusion of authority and comprehensiveness. Perhaps because we could not know the extent or the range of expertise in an area, we judged based upon what we had-and that seemed sufficient. In finding reliable information, the problem with finding experts is separating the wheat from the chaff. In today's digital world, there's just a lot more grain out there to winnow!

This article includes sources and strategies for locating people who appear to be experts in various fields and aspects ofbusiness. Many sources that offer lists of business experts focus upon selling the services of these experts. With the exception of resources listing expert witnesses, I have excluded most of those sources.

WHAT CONSTITUTES AN EXPERT

There is no easy answer as to who is an expert, but there are some commonly held beliefs as to what constitutes expertise. An expert is generally described as someone who is recognized by his or her peers or by the public as a reliable source of knowledge, information, and/ or abilities. Experts are seen as knowing more than the average person and are supposed to be capable of making better decisions than those who are less informed. Expertise is said to be acquired through study, education, or experience. However, expertise is often conferred through perception rather than through objective means. Studies of experts frequently focus on their output-how they make decisions or how they act relative to a set of circumstances or data.

The study of expert systems and the field of knowledge management (KM) are both dependent upon establishing criteria for experts and expertise in specific fields. If that is not possible or desirable, then guidelines for determining expertise are sometimes developed. The issue of expertise becomes more complex when one considers that different fields might have different markers or determinants and that the attributes of experts in some fields might be unimportant in others. A house painter, for example, is likely to acquire expertise from experience and training, while a nuclear physicist gains the expert appellation by virtue of advanced degrees.

Although those who study the nature of expertise have devised various external criteria for who should be considered an expert, those issues beg the question. What we are often seeking when we look for a business expert is a correct answer to a question. We are looking for someone who can make a decision or give a qualified opinion about how to act relative to some set of circumstances or data. We are looking for someone who knows the facts-someone who has knowledge that we don't. In the end, it may be that you need not define an expert to identify one. Perhaps we just know, or intuit, when we find an expert and need not worry about the definition. This was the case with U.S. Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart, who once remarked regarding pornography, "I knowit when I see it" (Jacobellis v. Ohio, 378 U.S. 184 [1964]). So, setting aside the question of what is an expert and how do we determine expertise, I'll focus on the how and where of finding experts.

BASIC STRATEGIES

Consider who wants to know about a field and who is required to know. Intense interest could be the hallmark of an expert in a collectible, such as electric trains, while a civil engineer must hold a valid registration in the state in which he or she practices. A beginning strategy for finding experts would be to think about who might logically develop an expertise in the field under discussion, and who is passionate about it. Regardless of the field, experts are likely to be found in the ranks of academic and professional writers, specialized publication editors, experienced practitioners, professors, consultants, spokespersons for trade and professional associations in the field, governments officials (including regulators and legislators) and watchdogs or critics who monitor the field.

After considering the scope of people who may know about a topic, think about whether they are opinionated or agenda-driven. Bias does not necessarily rule out an expert, but it is important to consider the context or area in which an expert is situated. For example, some spokespersons affiliated with companies, industries, associations, and universities are experts with deep knowledge and understanding of their field. Others have all the "right" buzzwords because they have prepared responses to likely questions that address the agendas of their organizations or enterprises. Their true expertise may be in public relations or spin control, rather than the topic at hand. Their value may be strictly in their presentation of an accepted or standard position on a topic. An advantage to speaking with such an expert is that one may obtain the direct rationale for a particular agenda or decision, as opposed to the careful wording of the spokesman.

START WITH A DIRECTORY

In an information overload situation, where everyone seems to be an expert and many people claim to be experts, how do you begin the search for someone who might have genuine expertise rather than just knowing all the right words to say? Keeping in mind the strategy of considering who has a strong reason to know about a field, a good preliminary strategy is to rely on someone else's collection of names and then working to discover someone qualified to address your needs from sources already in existence.

Associations generally have spokespeople, special interest groups, and member directories. If you know of a professional or trade association by name, the obvious approach is to go directly to its website. If you are researching a business topic, you might wish to use a directory that lists associations. Try using the classic Encyclopedia of Associations series from Gale, a part of Cengage Learning (http://gale .cengage.com), which is available in print, in data sets through many online database aggregators (such as LexisNexis and File 114 on Dialog), as data sets ordered directly from Gale, or in online directory format.

Like their print equivalents (and differing from online data sets) online directories maintain directory information within their time frame, so historical information is available as well as current information. The American Society of Association Executives (www.asaecenter.org) has two association locator databases: Gateway to Associations and Societies of Association Executives. Professional or trade organizations frequently have lists of experts and consultants. For example, the American Bankers Association has a list of experts devoted to financial institutions (www.aba.com) called Experts on Call. However, it is a member benefit. LexisNexis(www.lexisnexis. com/media /expert-news-source) maintains a free directory of "respected industry leaders," who are experts on various legal topics.

EXPERTS AT WHO'S WHO

Traditional business directories that are available online include Consultants & Consulting Organizations Directory, part of the Gale Directory Library series (www.gale.cengage.com); Standard & Poor's Register of Corporations, Directors & Executives, and Money Market Directory Of Pension Funds and their Investment Managers (http://www2 .standardandpoors.com). Nelson Marketplace is available in online or print versions: the Directory of Investment Managers, the Directory of Plan Sponsors, and the Directory of Pension Fund Consultants, available by subscription from Nelson Information (www.nelsoninformation.com), a subsidiary of Thomson Financial.

EXPERTS WHO WERE WHO

Another approach to using historical data to enrich data sets appears in Leadership Networks, an interactive networking database by Leadership Directories, Inc. In addition to traditional views of directory-type information ab out people from its 14 directories, this database also lets users display networks of people and their connections. Somewhat like the broad-based, free social networking sites found on the web in business social networking sites such as Linkedln, network connections among individuals can be displayed as well at Leadership Networks. Unlike the free web, where links are self-directed, these connections are being made from among the directory content, both current and historical. The database displays current connections, past connections, and "degrees of separation." The display capabilities enable visual clustering by organization and other network connections.

The Leadership Networks database makes use of data from earlier issues of the various Leadership Directories series (www.leadershipdirectories.com). Of course, the print editions of these directories are available as well, under familiar names such as Congressional Yellow Book, Corporate Yellow Book, Law Firms Yellow Book, Associations Yellow Book, and so on. Of course, there are online directories that provide lists of people whom they identify as experts. ExpertClick.com is the online version of the Yearbook of Experts, a source that is often used by journalists and the media when seeking an expert quote for a story.

BUSINESS AND SOCIAL NETWORKS

Business profile pages and social networking sites with business profiles are another interesting source for finding experts. Unlike published directories where inclusion is based upon the scope and standards of the publisher, most business profile pages are usually, but not always, s elf-directed. Among the popular, business-focused social networking sites is Linkedln (www.linkedin.com).

Ryze Business Networking is a social profile site that enables its members to create special networks, akin to special interest groups. An example is the Women Business Owners network at Ryze (http://wbo-network.ryze.com). Ecademy (www.ecademy.com) is an online business networking site that also offers offline networking events. Its groups might be useful for seeking experts. Somewhat different in approach, XING (www.xing.com) specifically promotes itself as a venue for contacting experts and also has topicoriented groups of participants. Similar in style but not in content to broad based social networking sites, it allows individuals to post their business profile, their picture, and other parts of their resume as well as invite others to join their professional network.

Other business profile sites, such as Zoomlnfo (www.zoominfo.com) or Spoke (www.spoke.com), create business profiles without human input. Instead, they scrape the web using algorithmic searching for names and organizations. If a profile is created about you, you may claim it as yours andmodifyit. On the lighter side, eHow is social profile site that enables people posting their business profiles to demonstrate their expertise by posting "how to" articles that accompany the profiles (www.ehow.com). This site covers more than business, but many of its business "how tos" are amusing, if not informative.

How-to videos can also be found at sites such as MonkeySee, which sports the tag line "see how the experts do it" (www.monkeysee.com). Other sites with how-to videos include 5min (www .5min.com), Expert Village (www.expert village.com), and Video Jug (www .videojug.com). Most of the topics on which these "experts" share their knowledge are consumer-oriented, and many are downright trivial (skateboarding, wearing red lipstick, pool shots, wedding favors, and solving Rubik's Cube are some from Monkeysee). Still, some of the business topics could resonate with a library's users. Also on MonkeySee, you can find videos on how to speak in public, be a better salesperson, write a book, and consider an internship. Viewing the clips is generally sufficient to determine the expertise of the presenter.

GOING THE GOVERNMENT ROUTE

Within the United States, at the federal and state levels, access to government officials and other government workers who may be experts on business topics can facilitated by the federated search site, USA.gov (www.usa .gov). While this has greatly improved access to many government sites, it is probably quicker to use directories of government officials, such as the previously mentioned Leadership Network, or other third party directories such as Carroll Publishing's GovSearch (www.carrollpub.com/govsearch.asp) to locate possible experts as well as. Google's U.S. Government Search (www.google.com/ig/usgov) can also be useful forlocating people or directories of named or potential experts.

Directories available through federal government agencies include lists of contacts and experts who can help businesses navigate through contracts, regulations, and laws relative to business or offer guidance about economic and financial issues. An example of such a source is the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's Small Business Gateway, which provides a contacts and experts list (http://epa.gov/smailbusiness).

Nonprofit and quasi-governmental agencies that work with businesses also have lists of contacts and experts. SCORE, a partner with the U.S. Small Business Administration, refers to its services as "Counselors to America's Small Business." The SCORE website contains self-reported profiles of SCORE counselors who provide confidential small business advice for entrepreneurs (www.score.org). The World Bank Experts Guide is designed to provide journalists with the names of World Bank subject experts (www.worldbank.org). State and local governments and local chambers of commerce frequently have lists of advisors and experts as well.

CHAINING FOR EXPERTS

A time-honored way of seeking experts is to search aggregated databases of journal and magazine articles for authors who appear to be authoritative and then contact them. On Dialog, use the RANK command to determine the authors who have written the most on your topic. Suppose you needed an expert on HDTV First, pick a combination of databases that would include business, news, and technical publications and use Dialog's CURRENT command (for example begin 9, 15, 211, 2 current). Then enter a search query, something like s hdtv or high ()definition()Ctelevision or tv) or digitaL()Ctelevision or tv). That gives you set No. 1. Next you enter rank s1 au cont. This yields a ranked list of authors, with the most prolific on top.

Another approach is chaining backward from the bibliographies in the articles, if they have any. You can chain forward using citation indexes such as Science Citation Index or Social Science Citation Index, available directly at Thomson Scientific's Web of Science (part of their Web of Knowledge product) or by database name, through aggregators such as Dialog. When chaining forward, you use the name of an author or article of interest to locate others who have cited the article in their bibliographies, essentially going forward in time from the original published article. Google Scholar also enables users to chain forward, as does Elsevier's subscription-based Scopus, which focuses on scientific information. While clearly intended for case research, one can also chain forward in legal citation databases such as Westlaw and LexisNexis.

EXPERT WITNESSES

One special class of experts, or more precisely specialists with a narrow scope of expertise, is that of the expert witness. An expert witness is someone with specialized knowledge gained by education, training, experience, or skill, and who can express this expertise in legal proceedings.

Attorneys involved in litigation looking for expert witnesses drive the creation of expert witness lists. These experts can be repurposed as business experts when business and law intersect. The same type of industry knowledge and expertise that is needed for testimony is likely needed for business. These experts usually come with years of prior work or academic experience. Conversely, the individuals who are listed make their living by being professional expert witnesses and may not be "de facto experts."

Sources that attorneys use to identify expert witnesses include HGExperts.com, and Expert Pages (www.expertpages.com). JurisPro is a directory where experts list their credentials and attorneys choose the appropriate expert based on credentials (www.jurispro.com).

GROLPTHINK OR WISDOM OF CROWDS?

James Surowiecki defines the "wisdom of crowds" by saying that "under the right circumstances, groups are remarkably intelligent and are often smarter than the smartest people in them." His book TheWisdom of Crowds pursues what those "right circumstances" might be. For many people, however, the catchphrase "wisdom of crowds" is employed to justify what is actually closer to "group think," where a group of people who seek to reach consensus do so at the expense of thinking critically about an issue.

Group think does not appear to be confined to decision making. Sometimes, it seems as if all the experts you find are expressing ideas so similar as to create uncertainty or malaise. Have they thought through their opinions, or are they simply parroting what their peers and colleagues believe? The question that lies unanswered in such cases is whether the idea of "right circumstances" applies here or if the experts have inadvertently exhibited "groupthink."

ETHICAL ISSUES

While unintended use of information is the hallmark of search engines, discovery tools, and federated search, this is generally regarded as ethical use of that information. However, ethical questions arise about using job and career-related information, such as that found at job sites such as Monster.com or at executive recruitment sites such as The Ladders (www.theladders.com). Since people post their profiles to these sites for a purpose other than providing expert opinions, is it ethical to mine such sites for expertise? What about harvesting expert names from discussion lists, blogs, public wilds, and other social media? Perhaps the answer lies in whether you are planning to hire an expert or "just" ask for an opinion.

Other professional and ethical concerns are the more familiar ones that relate to the collection of any information to be used for decision making. The most prominent of these would b e whether the claims and qualifications of the experts found have been sufficiently investigated.

VALIDATING EXPERTISE

We all know that individual websites, no matter how authentic looking, can be misleading for any number of reasons-inaccuracy, disinformation, misinformation, hidden agendas, and so on. After you succeed in identifying people believed to be experts, a followup strategy is to search to find corroboration from other independent sources. Here's where search engines, metasearch engines, and federated search utilities that cluster their results and display the clusters on the search engine results page may prove indispensable. Favorites here include Crusty, powered by Vivisimo (www.clusty .com), which displays its clusters in a side frame, and Kartoo (wwwkartoo .com), which presents related documents visually.

In those halcyon days of yesteryear, all reference works were infallible, and an expert was immediately recognized as a bona fide expert (or so we recall). But was immutable information in print sources necessarily more accurate? Or do we just remember it that way because there were fewer choices? Did having stable sources allow us the luxury of examining and evaluating the overall quality of the source instead of having to evaluate every item in a collaborative resource that changes constantly?

The Web 2.0 collaborative environment presumes that there are sufficient numbers of people who will attend to the text and correct any errors. Those who have spent time as intermediaries-collecting, evaluating, and disseminating information from secondary sources-have long been familiar with many of the arguments and concerns about information accuracy, even in what are considered to be stable and reputable sources. Most information about individuals is s elf-reported. This in itself is not a criticism or an indictment. It only means that researchers must have a strategy and seek multiple independent sources of information when seeking to identify an expert.

SIDEBAR

In an information overload situation, where everyone seems to be an expert and many people claim to be experts, how do you begin the search for someone who might have genuine expertise rather than just knowing all the right words to say?

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LexisNexis maintains a free directory of "respected industry leaders" who are experts on various legal topics.

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Women 8usiness Owners network is a special-interest group on Ryze 8usiness Networking.

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The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's Small Business Gateway provides a contacts and experts list.

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Looking for Answers in All the Wrong Places, or Possibly Some Correct Places

In her article,"Everyone's an Expert," Roberta Brody notes that a web-enabled world makes everybody look like an expert. She then describes resources that help us identify true experts. Meanwhile, the idea of human-powered search engines is enjoying a resurgence.Two articles, one a decade old and the other written only a few months ago, show the progression of the intersection between people and search engines to deliver answers online. Neither article even touches on the notion of "Ask a librarian," which is hardly new and assumes that a librarian is a qualified expert.

HUMAN SEARCH ENGINES 10 YEARS ON

In its December 2000 issue. Thomas Pack wrote the cover story for EConfenf. He called it "Human Search Engines: The Next Killer App."Those search engines implicitly elevated ordinary individuals to the rank of expert, or at least of knowledge people empowered to answer questions. Looking back a decade later, most of the sites he tested are gone. Answerpoint, Abuzz, LookSmart Live, Professional City, and many others have vanished into the ether. EXP.com brings up a page with a logo and the company's mailing address.That's it; there's not even a phone number. Keen.com is still there, but its advice is strictly personal now, concentrating on "love & relationships," giving psychic readings, spiritual advice, and horoscopes. The InfoMarkets website exists, but with the notation that it "has closed." Many other URLs connect to nothing at all.

Pack described FIND/SVP as "a premium Q&A service." Under its new name, Guideline (www.guideline.com), the company still answers corporate questions for a fee. The Internet Public Library (www.ipl.org) remains vigorous, although it's moved from the University of Michigan School of Information to Drexel University. The charming graphical interface of !PL's Reference Center, which looked like an early version of a second Life research center, is gone. ExpertCity now redirects to CitrixOnline, the company responsible for GoToMeeting and other GoTo tools, lnquiry.com redirects to devx.com, which does offer a list of "10 minute solutions" to various IT developer problems.

Pack, in theorizing that human search engines were the next big thing, had the right idea. In practice, however, implementing that next big thing turned out to be harder than anticipated.The shelf life of the early answer engines was not very long.

HUMAN-POWERED SEARCH ENGINESTODAY

The newer intersection of people and search is detailed by Phil Bradley in the January 2008 issue of Ariadne (www.ari adne.ac.uk/issue5-4/search-engines/). In "Human-powered Search Engines:An Overview and Roundup," he examines, in alphabetical order, Anoox (www.anoox.com), ChaCha (www .chacha.com), Collarity Relevance engine (www.collarity.com), Earthfrisk (www.earthfrisk.org), iRazoo (www.irazoo.com), Mahalo (www.mahalo.com), Sproose (www.sproose.com), Wikia Search (http://alpha.search.wikia.com), and various "build your own" search engines. In this latter category fall Rollyo (www.rollyo.com), Eurekster (www.eurekster.com), Yahoo! search builder (http://builder.search.yahoo.com), and Google custom search (www.google.com/coop/cse).

Each brings its own approach to the human element tied to search. Anoox and Mahalo, for example, allow questioners to rate the worth of the human answer, iRazoo asks users to recommend pages, while ChaCha employs people as guides to help answer questions. Earthfrisk is more a metasearch engine, which combines web search engines, social media sites, and reference sources.

Bradley concludes that each of the human powered search engines have drawbacks and advantages. His concern is with people "gaming the system," recommending and rating pages, sites, and answers for their own gain rather than the good of the searching community. In effect, gaming the system distorts the expertise of the humans behind human-powered search engines.

-Marydee Ojala

SIDEBAR

JurisPro is a directory where experts may list their credentials and attorneys can choose the appropriate expert based on credentials.

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SOURCES

Janis, Irving L. Groupthink: Psychological Studies of Policy Decisions and Fiascoes. 2nd ed. New York Houghton MifflinCo., 1996.

Keen, Andrew. The Cult of the Amateur: How Today's Internet Is Killing Our Culture. New York: Doubleday, 2007.

Surowiecki, Jim. The Wisdom of Crowds. New York: Anchor Books, 2004.

AUTHOR_AFFILIATION

Roberta Brody, Ph.D. (Roberta.Brody@QC.cuny.edu) is an associate professor at the Graduate School of Library and Information Studies, Queens College, City University of New York. Zehavah Brickner, John Carey, Felicia Denzer, Iwona Drag Korga, Timothy Haigh, Matthew Harrick, Victor Romero, Albert Tablante, and Leslie Wong were students in GSLIS 786: Business Information Sources and Services, which was taught by professor Brody.

Comments? Send email to the editor (mary dee@xmission.com).