Kat, I think you will find your "perfesser-type" folklorist is a man or woman who goes out and lives, as much as possible, with the people who have preserved the old arts and receipts, customs and crafts. The university-educated types working in the field (not lab) that I know about either originally came from the "back country" or developed an intimate knowledge of the people and their arts through close association for many years.
There are many examples of these dedicated folklorists, but one of my favorites is a woman, now dead, who came to New Mexico and Arizona long ago and became interested in the Navajo, his healing ceremonies and his sandpaintings. Mrs. Wheelwright was a wealthy, full-blooded easterner, university-educated, who threw herself into her new pursuit. She developed close ties with the Navajo healers, and built a museum to house their sand-paintings and allied art. So closely did she become associated, that the Navajo healers came to the museum and constructed their sand-paintings, including those that were private to the Navajo, because she convinced them that they should be preserved, would be treated as sacred to their beliefs, and that the Navajo healers would help in the curation and display. Materials considered private to the Navajo would be re-created and blessed, but would not be publicly displayed. She was scorned at first by the anthropologists at the Laboratory of Anthropology, but her Wheelwright Museum of the American Indian is now justly famous and worth a visit to Santa Fé just to see that one (of many) collections and research facilities. As the name implies,, the goals have expanded to cover other Indian arts and crafts. Similarily dedicated people work in association with the gigantic Museum of International Folk Art, also in Santa Fé.
Information found on the internet is helpful to all of us, but compilation of this information is not research in the true sense because it does not involve the assembling and assessing of new, unpublished material that will help us to re-evaluate information and artifacts already compiled.
In the future, as suggested by katlaughing, the people and activities of the internet will be studied by the social anthropologist and social historian. Some researchers are already involved in that field.