I remember, in the library, wooden cabinets with little drawers filled with index cards, the card catalog. As a member of the debate team at Iowa State University, I spent many hours with the card catalog looking for quotes and facts to support the affirmative argument in the year-long debate topic, something like resolved: that Europe and the U.S. should form an economic union, something like that. Memory fails.
I would use the card catalog to find books and articles to support the position, and copy the arguments and quotes, by hand, onto my own set of index cards to refer to in the debates. We traveled all over the Midwest and South, from Topeka, Kansas to Jackson, Mississippi, to debate and speech tournaments.
I usually, besides the debates, which were always the main attraction, also entered the extemporaneous speaking contest, where you were given a half hour to peruse a list of ten possible topics, and then had to deliver a ten minute speech about whichever one was chosen by the judges.
I was madly in love with Lorrie, my debate partner, but that’s another story.
The point of all this is the incredible explosion in the ability to access information, that has occurred in the intervening 53 years, at least for those who are interested in accessing information, which, amazingly enough, in some respects, seems to be a declining number, but maybe that’s just my old fartism talking.