Every time I see a “search engines suck now” complaint I just want to remind everyone that you can call your local public library and ask any question you’d google the answer to and a reference librarian will find you a good answer.
When I was in library school they were so afraid of search engines killing reference librarianship and now that’s clearly not the case so go utilize your local library for getting your ready reference answers you used to google.
I’m also frustrated that the perception of google as killing librarianship means a lot of library systems cut the reference book budget and library schools taught significantly less about ready reference skills and utilizing reference books than they used to
But every librarian still is trained and equipped to go find your answer in a specialized database or to walk over to a reference book like World Book or Mayo Clinic Encyclopaedia of Medical Disorders and find you a brief but accurate answer to your questions.
Librarians also generally just have a lot of research skills you might not have that helps us comb through the SEO bullshit more efficiently if the question is a bit more sideways and unusual.
So if you’re like damn it’s impossible to get answers to questions anymore go utilize your public library. We already have had tax funded free information and answers service for a century and it’s called the library and you can call the library if you don’t wanna physically go to there or you can also use E-Reference through the website of most libraries and get a detailed answer with multiple further reading sources emailed to you within a few days.
