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Which is all to the good, since some of what Guedea CarreÑo does is, in fact, routine library stuff. She spends 15% of her time finding answers to questions. Most of them are straightforward. ("What is the status of the Manufacturers Life Insurance class-action suit?") Some of them are baroque. ("Why does authenticity matter?") The latter question, not surprisingly, came from Highsmith, whose intellectual curiosity is reflected in the subjects--epistemology and the interaction between people and computers, among others--that Guedea CarreÑo tracks for him independently of Life, the Universe, and Everything. "It took me five years to admit to him that I read People on the plane," says Guedea CarreÑo. "I was afraid he'd think I was incredibly shallow."

The subjects (there are 68 currently) that Guedea CarreÑo and her colleagues track for other employees are more prosaic than some of Highsmith's interests, ranging from the effect of wellness initiatives on health-care costs, to best practices for trade-show exhibits, to competitive activity. The librarians typically scan 100 or more publications a month, plus Web sites, electronic mailing lists, and other sources; they then pass along to employees only those articles, excerpts of articles, or annotated tables of contents that are likely to interest them. Altogether, Highsmith managers say that about 80% of the external information they read is chosen for them by Guedea CarreÑo and her staff, a practice that dramatically reduces the amount of paper accumulating on people's desks and ensures that what does accumulate there is relevant.

Guedea CarreÑo gets it right so often because she has mastered "customization"--the big bright promise of the Web. But Web sites require frequent visits and the inputting of personal data to "learn" customers' preferences; Guedea CarreÑo accomplishes the same thing by chatting people up. She starts from general topics defined by individual staff members and then acts like an exquisitely nuanced version of My Yahoo!, culling material appropriate not only to their interests but also to their information-consumption habits. "She knows from conversations we've had that I'm a very touchy-feely person and that I prefer working with people to numbers," says Patty Sehnert, team coordinator for customer service. As a result, when Guedea CarreÑo chooses articles for Sehnert, she avoids anything reeking of process.

Guedea CarreÑo also customizes how she delivers material. For John Kiley, director of marketing, she often provides a verbal summary. "You can hand John this beautifully presented and annotated outline with tabs and everything, and he will call you and say, 'Well, what's the answer?' or 'Could you come up here and tell me about it?" says Guedea CarreÑo. "It's good to have the documented stuff, but he needs to talk it out." Other employees prefer bullet points or charts or, on occasion, the full text of everything.

"I think it depends on their learning styles--whether they are visual, aural, or textual--as well as on the particular type of information being delivered," says Guedea CarreÑo.

Her familiarity with her coworkers extends to the workings of the entire company--an understanding that arises from her close collaboration with Highsmith and other executives and from her regular attendance at (and participation in) upper-management meetings. "She works with finance and human resources, so she knows the financial ratios and what kind of turnover we have--she's got a global understanding of the company," says Kiley.

That global understanding comes in handy when the librarians take on large, formal research projects for individual managers. The projects demand real bloodhound work, followed by an almost academic synthesis and, occasionally, personal recommendations for courses of action. Guedea CarreÑo generally kicks off the process with an in-depth interview--sometimes as long as 45 minutes--in which she and the project's initiator "negotiate" its scope and time frame and clarify its goals. "People frame their requests in terms that they think you want to hear or in terms that they think are the proper terms," says Guedea CarreÑo. "All it does is obscure what they're really after." For example, a project on "succession planning" for vice-president of human resources Bill Herman turned out to be about hiring people who can grow into key positions, not about who would be Highsmith's next CEO.

Not all projects need such elaborate preparation. A few years ago, Kiley asked Guedea CarreÑo and assistant corporate librarian Genevieve Mecherly to look into nursing homes as a potential new market for some of Highsmith's more than 37,000 products. With very little discussion, the librarians went forth and brought back information about market size, major players, public and private ownership, geographic distribution, products purchased, vendors used, and demographics of the customer population--"the whole nine yards," marvels Kiley. "Lisa just thinks like a marketer," he says, explaining why he didn't have to spell out all his questions up front. And the material came with a bonus: the librarians' insights into what it all meant. (The demographics looked promising, they concluded.) "It's not just providing a torrent of materials, it's also her interpretation of it," says Kiley of Guedea CarreÑo. "I take her opinions into account a lot."

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Leigh Buchanan

Leigh Buchanan is an editor at large for Inc. Magazine. A former editor at Harvard Business Review and founding editor of WebMaster magazine, she writes regular columns on leadership and workplace culture, and she contributes Inc.'s capsule book reviews, "A Skimmer's Guide to the Latest Business Books."

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