Prior to Google, how did people search for knowledge or concepts to try to understand them?

That means libraries were the go-to for people to research and understand topics long ago, right? That must mean highly academic civilizations and nations had, and still have, a large number of libraries preserved to this day.

So what does that mean if a nation doesn't have a large number of libraries? I'm from Indonesia, and that's actually my concern.

I've been to the US, and the number of people going to the library and utilizing it to study is astonishing.

Here, we don't really care. In my experience, a lot of my peers don't really care about going deep into a certain topic. They just learn enough to pass a test and get by, which is not entirely wrong. But I do really believe that, to advance our nation as a whole, people need to start understanding the whys of what they're learning and mastering the subject, which starts by reading. But I've yet to see people doing this, other than a few.

That made me question: was this ever a habit of the Indonesian people in the past? And does the lack of libraries and infrastructure that supports studying reinforce my argument that we do lack the academic infrastructure and motivation to be on par with nations such as India, China, Russia, the United States, and even neighboring countries such as Malaysia, Singapore, and Thailand?

What do you think?

https://www.nowjakarta.co.id/a-passionate-call-for-the-return-of-indonesias-golden-age-of-reading-books/ https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/ajps.12963