Back then, it wasn't easy to get instant answers to all of your most pressing questions:
Instead, you'd have to try firing your questions off to a librarian:
Although librarians couldn't answer every question, they'd do their best:
"Is this the place where I ask questions I can't get answers to?"
Some questions wouldn't have had answers even if Google *did* exist.
And some askers didn't get the answers they wanted:
Some questions from the archive are hilarious:
This one, a little embarrassing:
Some cards show a librarian with a sense of humor. This man was looking for "A Long Time In A Dark Cave":
Unlike Google, librarians could laugh at people's searches...
Hitler had been dead for two years when the library received this question:
We particularly liked this one:
Many questions make you wonder about the asker:
Did this person have six toes?
Was this asked by a pre-pubescent teen?
Did this person have too much eye-brow hair?
Some questions seem really obvious:
But, then again, think of all the stupid things you've Googled:
Sometimes common sense just fails you:
Some questions we decided to Google ourselves after we read them:
Some of the questions read like jokes:
We want to know what kind of book report this question was for:
People were looking for lists even before the advent of the "listicle":
Imagine life without "how-to" guides:
And you couldn't just Google search jokes:
Some questions reflect the times:
"It's a window into people's lives at the time," NYPL social media manager Johannes Neuer said to Business Insider.
You might have to rely on a library for a simple spell-check:
Or to confirm you were using the right word:
Or, ya know, questions about exotic pets:
We're guessing that there wasn't an entire book about this:
This was among one of the creepier questions we saw...
And this one left us the most bamboozled:
This question could be from an aspiring cadaver sales-person:
Bed bugs are always dramatic, in our opinion.
We bet this person was prepping for a vacation:
The real question is, how many are there *now*?
This "somebody" ended up being "the internet":
Believe it or not, librarians are still standing by.
You may want your Google searches to remain private, but people can actually still call, text, or chat with a NYPL librarian or research specialist. Find the right numbers and links here.
Now, scope something a bit more with the times:
