> Your public library didn’t have inter-library loan? Growing up before libraries had computerized databases, sure, they had ILL, but the books that weren't in

> Your public library didn’t have inter-library loan? Growing up before libraries had computerized databases, sure, they had ILL, but the books that weren't in their collection weren’t in the card catalog either, so you had no easy way of discovering that a book you might want outside of a library’s own collection (1) existed, and (2) was available through ILL. It wasn't until after the internet was generally available to the public that most public libraries I encountered had computerized catalogs with ILL availability.