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.
You can also utilize university libraries with some restrictions for your more complex academic oriented questions. When I used to work for an Ivy League university library I regularly did virtual reference for people who had no university affiliation. The caveat is they might provide sources that are trapped behind paywalls or are physically at the university library but you can’t borrow them without university affiliation and will have to physically visit the library during public visiting hours (usually more restricted than hours for people with university badges) in order to access those materials.
Like if google isn’t getting you your answer you can just email the Yale library or your local state university library with your research project and a librarian will happily provide you with a bunch of good sources to read and then you can use scihub or libgen to read those sources.
Also the Library of Congress! I've had good experiences emailing their reference desk.
Bonus: they have "research guides" for specific topics that they upload every once in a while. Basically a list of cool, reliable sources to start looking into. Your specific topic may not be listed but if it is, you hit the jackpot. Or you may get distracted with new questions, which is also a positive.
