Rodney

There were other search engines, and good ones.

But before the Internet itself? You don't want to know... You really don't. Unless you're over 30 or so, and then you know anyway.

Yes, dictionaries and encyclopedias and various "books of knowledge" in certain disciplines were more popular in pre-Internet times. For example, there were yearly almanacs or "books of fact" that contained summary information about the states, the countries, zip codes and area codes, celebrities' birthdays, sports stats, and a lot of things that people now look up online. These may still exist for all I know; but up until the '70s '80s you found them on every newstand and magazine rack in the first part of the year.

But the worst of it... for speciality info or info that hadn't been put into book form yet... was the dreaded "Reader's Guide to Periodical Literature," which listed magazine articles by topic. Every library had them (still does). This was as close to "on-line" info access that the average citizen has, and it sucks. This is how the procedure works:

1) At the library, you look up the topic you want in the Reader's Guide Directory for the previous year; then in the mid-year supplement for the first part of this year; then finally in the most recent quarterly-update paperback. If you can find it.

2) The Reader's Guide covers articles from 1000+ publications. You now check whether your library carries that publication. About 50 percent of the time, they don't.

3) You write down the name, volume, and date for the particular magazine or magazines you want, throw it in a box on the reference desk, and wait.

4) After he or she gets done slacking off in the break room, an 18-year-old library page picks up your request and wanders back into the magazine stacks, where you're not allowed to go.

5) A few minutes later, _some_ of your magazines appear on the counter. Not all of them do. No explanation is ever volunteered, but if you ask, you'll be told that the issue is missing. Or, that the magazine you want is still out on the floor with the most recent issues. Then you go there and find out it really _is_ missing.

6) Want copies? Most of the time you can't take the magazines home. So you have to make copies on the library's expensive and badly functioning coin-op copy machines. Wait, you don't have change?

This was how research was done when i was a lad. I do not miss it. And you _don't_ want to get me started on microfilm readers, either.

I first heard that phrase on the old Rowan and Martin's Laugh-in series in the late '60s. Laugh-In was a kinda-bad but innovative sketch comedy show that was big on double-entendre humor (the only kind of dirt you could sneak on prime-time TV at that point). Rowan was the straight man and Martin was the lewd and leering sidekick, and whenever the subject got to anything in even vaguely in bad taste, "You can look that up in your Funk'n Wagnalls" (that's the way he said it) was his standard retort.