| @BrettCaudill: We had an entire bookshelf taken up by the 1980 edition of the Encyclopedia Brittanica along with the Britannica "Year Books" from every year from 1980 to around 1988 when we stopped buying them. Some people had the Britannica's less sophisticated cousin the "World Book" Encyclopedia.
For anything more in depth, we had to go to the library and flip through the card catalogs and find a book about it. A good chunk of my education was spent learning the Dewey Decimal system. I do actually prefer the old card catalogs to the newer computer-based systems at the library because they were easier to search if you only had a vague idea of what you wanted. I'm sure the library was happy to get rid of them and reclaim the space they took up, though.
If it couldn't be found in either of those places, you asked your older brother who would invariably give you the wrong answer, but with enough confidence that you believed him anyway. |