In those days, if you wanted to know something but did not own an expensive encyclopedia (or your encyclopedia was no longer sufficiently up-to-date to tell you what you wanted to know), you had to go to a library and spend hours searching for what you needed.
En aquellos días, si uno deseaba averiguar algo pero no poseía una costosa enciclopedia (o la que tenía no estaba tan al día como para contener esa información), había que ir a la biblioteca y dedicar horas a encontrarla.