The Reference desk is for questions about life, the universe, and everything (other than about Wikipedia). It's a virtual version of the reference desk at a library. Wikipedians are very knowledgeable, and if they don't know the answer, they can probably find it pretty quickly.
Wikipedia search is much more powerful than most people know! There are several tips and pages such as Help:Searching which explains some of these features, but the documentation at mw:Help:CirrusSearch is the most complete.