You don't have to get too far off the beaten path to hit material that's only even mentioned in books, and you'd never even know exists if you only used the Web

You don't have to get too far off the beaten path to hit material that's only even mentioned in books, and you'd never even know exists if you only used the Web. The Web is pretty damn shallow for, especially, history and social science, in my experience. It's great if you want to look up math stuff, I guess. For social science it seems fastest way to get into a topic is just use the Web to find one decent, recent book on the topic, get it, then write down all the books & sources that book name-drops in its introduction as important or notable, and go get them. College course syllabi can also be useful if you're really starting from scratch (especially for finding that first book). If you try to stick with the Web you'll just spin your wheels.