… what kinds of research questions that come up for me. In the past couple of months we’ve done research on:

– finding shadows in ball parks
– what kind of mirages cause ships to apparently float in mid-air
– how to find tweets from a particular place
– finding cartoons from a not-quite-correct description
– how to build an interactive widget for the island-viewing problem
– exploding seeds

So you know that I’m interested in the kinds of questions prompted by photos like this:

Major General George A. Custer, officer of the Federal Army. (circa April 15, 1865) Brady National Photographic Art Gallery (Washington, D.C.).

Did George Custer have freckles?

(Or is it an imperfect in the photographic process? Or is it some other skin condition?)

Or…

Where did that crazy uniform design come from? Was that standard Federal Army issue?

But that’s not the question for today. Today’s Challenge is about what kinds of SearchResearch questions come up for YOU in your average week. Here’s your Challenge for this week:

1. What kinds of things do you find tough to research? In an average week (however you define that), what topics and questions do you find yourself trying to research?

I’m asking this question broadly (in my Facebook posting, on Twitter, G+, through surveys, and other venues).

Next week I’ll pull together the answers that have come my way, and I’ll try to identify themes and topics. (And, in the process, try to come up with some future SRS Challenges that will be based on what I hear from you.)

Search on! (And tell me what kinds of things you do research for, and what makes it difficult!)