Research today has become relatively easy with the advent of the search engine giants algorithms. Key in a few keywords and hit the search button and then wait for the millions of results to appear a few seconds later. Of course, most people can't read a million or so results, so a little tweak here and there in the search terms and try again. Whittling and winnowing the search results until such time as the list becomes manageable.

Its interesting because whilst writing this I wanted to ask you a question - namely what did you do BEFORE the search engines made life easy for you? And then I had to go the Internet to find out just how long these programs had been around. The answer surprises even me - It began as a research project by Sergey and Brin in 1996 but did not become "Google" until the following year when the domain name was registered - and it would be another year before it launched.

Just 12 years from inception to giant. Quite phenomenal when you think about it. But it still doesn't answer the question - what did you do BEFORE Google came on the scene.

Libraries of course were the only place to conduct serious research. The better ones of course belonged to the academics - the schools, colleges and universities. Of course if you were fortunate to be located close enough to the main deposit libraries or national libraries you were the fortunate ones. The known world collected in one place for your research pleasure. We should not discount however, those other libraries because they too play a huge part in our knowledge search. Company libraries specialising in collecting material to enable their staff and employees perform their jobs better, and of course the public libraries without which we would all be knowledge limited.

But what did you do when you walked into these places?

Well if you didn't have the first clue about what you needed then the first point of call was always the librarian on duty. Catalogues - in the beginning these were drawer upon drawer of cards ... they had a hole in the bottom so a rod could be slotted through so people didn't steal the information. These cards would eventually be typed into the many databases that came through in the 70's and 80's and the cards would be relegated to a dusty archive box somewhere.

But if anyone has used a card catalogue will testify - they're not exactly the easiest thing to use. You had to know the start of the title, or the author, or a broad subject category. Armed with a little bit of information, you made your way down to the shelf stacks and wandered along until you found the right location. Reading the titles and the numbers until such time as you found the right section, and hoping against hope someone hadn't beaten you to it. But one of the beautiful things about going to the bookshelves is you can find other items you didn't know existed. You read all the titles, picked a couple of books off the shelves at random and scanned the pages. This process allowed lateral thinking to take place. You took note of the alternative titles and words used. You followed the bibliographies and scanned the shelves for those titles too. And you hoped you could find enough evidence to back up your statements and arguments.

There is something very organic about that kind of searching, and I must admit to a certain fondness for wandering through the many libraries searching for arcane bits of information - but I know that's just me - I mean who has the time to do that kind of research anymore. Given how much more material is available on the Internet these days, and getting more and more coverage every day - we don't have time to wade through obscure titles that may have something of interest and possible use.

So whilst Google has opened up a vast chasm of information for us to explore, it does mean we don't have to think in quite the same way...well I don't think so at any rate. But if you disagree with me - by all means let me know.