Ah, the good old days…

[At] “The first library I worked in […] the database subscriptions were delivered on CD-ROMs and loaded on an IBM server for distribution throughout the local area network. […] a librarian would use a dial-up modem to connect to a commercial information services corporation, Dialog, which charged by the minute for connection time, and charged individual fees for searching a database, displaying citations, and for downloading each and every item. […] It was all too easy to spend $100 of the library’s money on a search which might take 8-10 minutes. […] Any student doing research had to physically be in the building in order to do any work. Once the search was completed, they then had to trek around the [library] stacks to locate the individual article in the [print] journal.”