Here is a neat read by Allison Braden about the history of a library collection juxtaposed with the rise of the internet. Braden describes “an ad hoc collection of local history, general trivia, and helpful know-how. Arranged in alphabetical order by subject, hundreds of similar cards fill a trio of long orange boxes. They contain the answers to decades of questions from library patrons, and they illustrate a vanishing way of transmitting and stewarding local culture…”
https://www.oxfordamerican.org/magazine/issue-116-spring-2022/search-history