Pre Internet DU'ers. When research was not a Google search. Those Blue bound indexes were called?

[alphafemale]

They would lead you to a magazine or other publication on the subject.

And my heart aches for card catalogs. And getting that card stamped.

OK not really...that pretty much sucked.

[catnhatnh]

1. Thomas Register??? N/T

[PoliticAverse]

2. The Readers Guide to Periodical Literature was what I used to use to find magazine articles

on a particular topic back in those days (which I do not miss).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Readers%27_Guide_to_Periodical_Literature

[alphafemale]

5. This.

Research used to be a real pain in the ass.

[rurallib]

9. IIRC that was for magazines. There was also one for newspapers

that was like OMG.

Our U library had periodicals back to the mid 1800s

[cyberswede]

3. We just called them a periodical index or Index of Periodicals.

I used them all the time in grad school. The idea seems strange now.

[alphafemale]

6. I know.

But it seemed more fun to research an obscure thing then.

Now that everything is a Google click away? meh

[hunter]

4. I remember some more specialized indexes on micro-fiche too...

And then the article you needed that day would be away at the bindery...

Or else it would be on microfilm, and all the microfilm viewers were occupied.

Or you'd have to order copies from another library, and the copies you got back were so horrible you couldn't read the figures, so you'd call up the librarian at a place with an legible copy and ask them to read the numbers you wanted...

[alphafemale]

8. I remember actually leafing through old copies of newspapers.

I was directly involved with getting the "stars and bars" off the GA flag. That was some old fashioned research.

Earlier lived in a neighborhood built with septic tanks that were told we wold have to pay to tie into sewer system at about 2K. Found in newspaper stacks that the judge that ordered the people pay rather that the property developer was the property developers DAUGHTER!

Well, then it got interesting....with like the law and all.

[lastlib]

7. Another fun one was the Current Digest of Soviet Press..........

(I got initmately acquainted with that one!)

[Mopar151]

10. Thomas Register was an industrial company/catalog index

About 10 feet of phone-book - thin pages. Came out every year, cost thou$snd$.

[Scuba]

11. I miss the Dewey Decimal Sytem

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dewey_Decimal_Classification

[JCMach1]

12. There was also the MLA guide

for us literary types...

[alphafemale]

13. Research used to be so much harder.

Some still is.

It would still pay to know how to research the old fashioned way for some things.

Go Fiche.

Not everything is online yet.

[Avalux]

14. The common denominator -

Time. It took time to find the answer by doing all those things. I remember a game my Dad and I would play at the dinner table. He'd ask me a question, usually about history, and I'd try to answer it. If I didn't know, or answered and he'd say "Are you sure?", I knew that was my cue to run into the living room and either get the dictionary or an encyclopedia, find the answer, then come back to the table and tell him.

It was a blast. Love you Dad!

[JaneyVee]

15. What is this "pre-Internet" you speak of?