If you have a question about any little thing that crosses your mind, there’s a good change you pull out your phone and consult Google, being dished up a bunch of answers in no time at all. Of course, that convenience has only been around for a brief out our inquisitive history, and before such options existed people had to resort to slower, more limited resources. The New York Public Library was one such source as shown by a bunch of reference cards from the 1940s through 1980s.

The New York Public Library has surfaced a box full of reference questions typed on cards, each of them dated and some containing names. You can see one example below, and a couple more in the gallery farther down.

via NY Public Library shares pre-Internet reference questions – SlashGear.