this post was submitted on 13 Oct 2025
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If you had a question that nobody could answer, you’d go down to the library, open up a drawer with a bunch of note cards in it, look to see if any of the note cards had a word about a concept you wanted to learn about, hope that the card existed, was in the right place, and listed a book that would actually give you the information you wanted.
Or you wouldn't go through the effort, you'd ask a trusted elder or a friend, they would lie to you, and you'd peddle that misinformation for decades while refusing that you might be wrong. Guess which one was more likely
The first step would be opening an encyclopedia. A lot of households actually had an encyclopedia on their shelves for this very reason. Something which these "pre-internet" rumination threads always seems to neglect.
Honestly I only ever knew one household with an encyclopedia set, I’m sure it depends on the location but where I lived that was more of an upper middle class thing.
I still have an encyclopaedia on my shelf. I have to admit it’s the small edition though.
I also still have a bunch of dictionaries (different languages), and a very outdated atlas.
You'd ask the librarian about where to find books about stuff and get a 3 hour lecture about the Dewey system
And also the books surrounding that book
Always pick a book to the left and one to the right! Is it useful? Likely not, but you’ll never know if you don’t!