Lecture Script: The Digital Librarian – The Missing 1%

A Lecture by Hiran de Silva

[Opening]
Most people already know 99% of what I’m about to show you. Power Query, dynamic arrays, pivot tables, even a bit of VBA—that’s the 99%. But the real transformation, the magic, is in the missing 1%.

And that 1% is not a new tool, not some hidden button on the ribbon. It’s a principle. Once you see it, you can’t unsee it.

[The Principle]
Here’s the budgeting example. You all know how to build a data model inside a workbook with Power Query. You can load data from 400 budget files, refresh, and create a pivot table. That’s standard practice.

But notice the limitation: the data model is inside the workbook. To collaborate, you must send the workbook around, refresh it, or re-import. That creates proliferation—multiple versions, copies flying around, confusion about which one is current. That’s one of the roots of Excel Hell.

Now imagine this:
What if the data model was outside the workbook?
If it were central, then any workbook, anywhere in the world, could push data into it or query results from it. No proliferation, no batch processing, no mess.

That’s the 1%.

[Analogy: The Librarian]
Think of your team writing a book. Everyone has their research scattered—in studies, kitchens, borrowed books on coffee tables. To find something, you rummage, you phone a teammate, you chase copies. It’s chaos.

How do you solve that?
You hire a librarian.

The librarian holds all the material, makes it structured, searchable, cross-referenced, instantly available. Notes you scribbled in one margin become visible to the whole team. The librarian doesn’t create new content. They simply manage and deliver it reliably.

That is what I call the Digital Librarian in Excel.

[Demonstration Flow]

1. Each budget holder has a simple sheet—28 rows for January to December, plus shop, city, country, region.
2. They click PUT. No add-ins, no external tech. Just built-in Excel functionality.
3. Their data is entrusted to the librarian, neatly structured and stored.
4. The next person does the same. Repeat 400 times—now the librarian has the complete budget model.
5. Any spreadsheet, anywhere, can now click GET and instantly retrieve consolidated data, filtered views, or drilldowns.

[The Contrast]
Without the librarian: hundreds of workbooks, proliferated, inconsistent, a Jackson Pollock canvas of splashes and overlaps.
With the librarian: one central model, clean, structured, Mondrian lines—order, clarity, elegance.

That’s the difference between Excel Hell and Excel Done Well.

[Practical Reality]
Now, some people object:

• “That’s not Excel, you’re using something else.”
• “We’d need IT, new systems, governance approvals, a year-long project.”

Wrong. The digital librarian can be created with Excel itself. In seconds, you can set up a shared Access database on a network drive, define the table structure directly from your sheet, and the librarian is ready. No new department. No bureaucracy. No year of waiting.

And here’s the kicker: users don’t need to be “smart enough to figure it out.” They just need to be smart enough to use it. I teach GET and PUT in under an hour. Once learned, it becomes second nature.

[The Payoff]
So let’s recap:

• You already know 99% of this from Power Query and data models.
• The 1% is realizing that the data model doesn’t have to live in the workbook.
• Put it outside, give it to the digital librarian, and you move from chaos to clarity.
• Same Excel, same skills—just one crucial shift in thinking.

That’s the magic. That’s the transformation.