The World Wide Web has, in many ways, made research so much easier, no more trawling though dusty books with a magnifying glass, no more booking appointments to visit archives, when so much has been digitised and can be accessed from anywhere. However, it has also thrown up lots of problems with unreferenced, computer generated content and unreliable source material.
The best research comes from searching a variety of material and assessing what is the most relevant. Often the information is already in the collection, but not attached to the object record. I have spent a lot of time looking through inhouse paper archives and ensuring data has been carried over to the digital record. This is vital for provenance queries and identification.
I can also carry out object research, (see Wisden Bat Collection) producing object descriptions, historical data on users, manufacturers etc that can be used for text labels, catalogue records, websites and social media.