Check the available options to store data, then think about how and where these data stores might be accessed.
A few decades ago, books were the obvious data stores. These could be found in department store, book stores and private or public libraries. Yes, could walk into a larger book store and be lucky to find an enthusiastic sales person who would investigate facts for/with you inside the "data warehouse" (no purchase necessary).
Libraries were also sort of networked in days before the internet, exchanging books (or photocopies or perhaps even manual transcripts) via mail (later on, telefax was an option as well).
The other, perhaps not as obvious data source are periodicals (newspaper, magazines). These are an even more important source than books (most scientific discoveries just appear in periodicals, not in books). Periodicals are archived by their publishers and also by libraries. Thanks to the above mentioned networking, it was possible to get about every published paper from anywhere in the world withing a few weeks, max).
That's all boring. A place with lots of books and periodicals is a data warehouse, and therefore not an unexpected information desk.
Possibly somehow related and a bit unknown to most people are "Orderstationen" (that's the german word, plural) - these were privately operated locations along larger waterways (like the river Rhine) which dealt with information. 111
Communication with passing ships was performed via radio or loudspeaker arrays (which could be rotated to stay trained on the ship with whom the person in the Orderstation was communicating). The main source of revenue for the Orderstationen were ship owner which used them to receive updates about their ships' position or to give new orders to the captains (like a new route or port of destination).
The Orderstaionen would also provide other information of interest to the ship crew. They were even equipped with a stock of records to play music for passing ships, if this was desired. So it wasn't just business-related communication, but also general inquiries, casual talk and entertainment. Obviously, the duration of a communication session was limited by the time the (moving) vessel was close enough to the Orderstation.
Orderstationen existed into the 1970s - more modern communication methods made them obsolete.
Note that locks (the "gates" in a river which separate different water levels and allow ships to pass) also typically served as Orderstationen. There were also Orderboote (boats). These allowed also to exchange written matter, but were less suited to allow for "on-line real-time inquiries", which a person working at an Orderstation could perform via telephone or telex. 87