The internet has created a world of information that we can access within seconds.
Whether we want to find out the average rainfall in Mauritiusor Bob Dylan’s shoe sizesomewhere on the internet there is an answer, even if it is not always necessarily trustworthy.
Google, the world’s most popular search engine, has even become a verb in its own right.
But in the dark pre-digital age, knowledge-seekers had no option but to source information from books or, failing that, librarians.
Dundee Libraries has just uncovered a book where unusual queries were logged in the 1930s and 40s and has posted some of the questions and answers on Twitter:
Look what we've just found, who wants to see inside? #letmelibrarianthatforyou pic.twitter.com/IePbAlo1Fy
— Dundee Libraries (@dundeelibraries) January 19, 2015
It then posted a photograph of some of the questions put to librarians from 1931 onwards:
https://twitter.com/dundeelibraries/status/557180901395025920
The answers, which were kept on record in case they should be needed again, soon followed:
https://twitter.com/dundeelibraries/status/557185675863527424
And the answers prove that old-fashioned know-how can still outsmart the internet in some circumstances.
Google could find no answer for “When did Sunday cars start in Dundee” – but agrees that knickerbockers came into fashion at the start of the 20th century.