I am trying to figure out what information Alustan can learn from his resources on the history of the Cairn and the associated organizations. The modules give pleanty of back info so I know whats going on, but my players are asking rather specific questions, and I am not sure what Alustan should be able to tell them. It is not really spelled out what he knows or can learn.
Stan
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In my campaign, the players were too paranoid to trust NPCs with valuable information right away, so I didn't need to figure out exactly what Allustan knew during the Whispering Cairn (even though I was playing his apprentice as an NPC mage in the party). He had earned their trust by the time they were to 3FoE, though, to the point that rescuing him from the Dark Cathedral became a goal of the adventure. (My players didn't take the initial plot hooks, so I had to improvise.)
Anyway, I would say that he doesn't have all of the answers immediately, but he has the means to research things and produce answers to most question raised by the adventures if given time.
It has been established through the adventure path that studing the region's cairns is one of Allustan's reasons for living out here, so I'd say any questions relating to the Wind Dukes or the Whispering Cairn itself would be easy for him to research. The affairs of 3FoE aren't clearly related to that stuff, though, so he should have a harder time producing answers.
Ultimately, he must not know anything about the Kyuss worms, the overgod, or anything of that sort, because the motivation for the next several adventures seems to be keyed to the uncovering of such information, and Allustan keeps sending them to other people for answers.
So...to me, this suggests that he should be able to research and answer any plot-relevant inquiry that is necessary to move the current adventure forward, but not anything that will be needed in the future.
His best use is probably as a lubricant to keep the adventure from getting stuck. In other words, have him offer to research any subject that the PCs mention, and you can then have him produce new nuggets of relevant lore any time the players seem to be at a loss. Don't define too clearly what he does or doesn't know, and that way you can use him to keep the story moving as needed instead of feeding the players all of the info they might want right up front.
I agree with Christopher that Allustan is a useful tool for keeping the plot from getting stuck. The thing I had trouble deciding on was how much "involvement" he would have with the PCs. The characters in my campaign trusted Allustan almost implicitly, and after some initial forays into the cairn, invited him to come along to gather information about the ancient Wind Dukes first-hand. I couldn't see any reason why he wouldn't go. At 5th or 8th level (depending on the bio), he's obviously been around some violent situations and survived them; the cairn is only a few miles away, and he's traveling with a group who has already done some initial exploration of a site he has explicitly returned to this dump of a town to learn more about.
I concocted a pressing trip to Greyhawk that prevented him from taking them up on the offer at this time, but he agreed to join them for a look when he returned. Then I had to concoct some urgency for the PCs to explore the cairn before his return.
Eventually, he did return with them to the cairn, but only after they had penetrated the true tomb and defeated the wind warriors. They wanted to be sure they weren't missing anything in the clues provided by all the wonderfully detailed descriptions of the various locations in the tomb.