Comment by ssl-3

When I was a kid, we had a long shelf dedicated to storing a voluminous encyclopedia in the family room, and subscribed to periodic (annual?) updates.

This was expensive.

IIRC, these books were purchased one small stack at a time from a locally-owned grocery store, which spread the expense over a longer period. One week, they'd have the books 1-5 on display and for sale, say. And the next week, it'd be books 6-10. After a time, a family could have the whole set.

Anyway, we had that. So when I wanted to find general information about a topic back then, before Google or Altavista or Webcrawler or whatever, I'd look in the encyclopedia first and get some background.

If it was something I really wanted to dig deeper on, I'd go to the library. If I couldn't find what I needed, I asked for help. Sometimes, this meant that they'd order appropriate material (for free) using inter-library loan for me to peruse.

If I already had enough background but needed a very specific fact, then I'd call the library's reference desk and they'd find it for me and call back. They'd then read the relevant information over the phone.

And if I wanted a reference to have and keep, then: We had book stores.

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Nowadays: Encyclopedias are basically dead, but we can carry an offline copy of Wikipedia in our pocket supercomputer if we choose. Books still get published. Libraries are still present, and as far as I can tell they broadly still find answers with a phone call.

It's not all lost, yet. The old ways still work OK if a person wants them to work. (Of course, Googling the thing or chatting with the bot is often much, much faster. We choose our own poison.)