Before the Internet, my friends and I would call the research desk at the local library. We'd sit around someone's house and have a debate over some topic. If, and when, we had a point of contention that we couldn't resolve with the resources at hand, we'd phone up the research desk. The folks at our local library were more than happy to place the phone down on the desk, go grab some reference material, and then pick the phone back up and give us a definitive answer.