How did researchers find articles before the Internet and the computer era? I find it hard to write a literature review, even though I have Google, the Internet, and all free, very easy to search for information tools.
I have to search for days to find a piece of information that is related to my research.
I really would not be able to do that without the help of the  internet and the technology.

This really makes me wonder how people in the past did that:


Did they have to read the entire book to find a piece of information?
I know they might have used the index, but still this wouldn’t have given them the details of what they were looking for.
Does that mean people in the past (before the Internet) worked harder to achieve their degrees?
Does that mean that research before relied less on references?
We depended on libraries and librarians. Grad students would spend hours in, say, the math section of a good academic library, going from book to book and taking copious notes (on paper, of course). 

But, often enough, the next paper we needed to look at wasn't in that library at all, so you would go to the librarian and ask for a loan of the resource from another library. 

But it was also an important technique to use the librarian as a 'knowledge expert' who could, and would, suggest things for you to look at and places to look. I don't know if librarians still get the training to do that. 

And, of course, you could ask your colleagues for hints about which rocks to uncover to find the gems.