I would imagine it was harder to get information on topics as you would’ve had to buy/borrow encyclopedias to do.

Were there proprietary predecessor websites?

Tell me about the dark ages!

  • cAUzapNEAGLb@lemmy.world
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    4 days ago

    I loved going to the library’s giant shelf of encyclopedias and picking one at random and flipping through the pages and skim reading.

    The books were heavy and had a distinctive smell, and occasionally someone tore out a page and then that was just lost knowledge.

    If there was a speicific question, Librarians were essentially our search engine, you’d ask them a question, and they’d think on it, maybe even ask a couple follow up questions, and they’d tell you to come back in a little bit or even a couple days, and when you return they’d hand you a list of books to find and checkout/read to find your answer.

    It wasn’t fast, but it made finding answers and factoids its own adventure.