Why wouldn't he want to help her? It was a tiny town and enemies between them could get very uncomfortable in these cramped quarters. Besides, he rather enjoyed getting to know people. Even the unpleasant ones. And Elphaba seemed far from unpleasant, though to be fair they did just meet.
"It's useful," he insisted. "If for nothing else than for research. Information on anything is avaliable through those things. Any question you have, you can find a thousand different viewpoints. It'll give you a very good idea about how this society works and thinks. Getting a grasp on that is one of the more difficult things of relocating so drastically." It's one of the problems faced when trying to settle the people who came through the Rift, out of time or from other planets.