Most of the texts that matter are. Yeah you’re not going to find some random flat earth blog in the library, but equally, that’s a good thing.

However, I wasn’t talking specifically about libraries. The web did still exist 20 years ago. Wikipedia is more than 20 years old. And newsgroups have been around much longer too.

The web was also mobile accessible for more than 20 years (WAP, for example, was introduced in 1999).

There were also phone numbers you could ring who could provide quick searches for information look up. People are most familiar with them in terms of telephone directory services (eg ring an operator to ask for the phone number of someone else) but there were other general knowledge services too. In fact I used one once when my bike chain broke, I walked to a local pay phone, and enquired how to put a chain back on.

Even know, there’s a plethora of information at local government information and audit offices, which isn’t available online. most of which is store on microfilm. A friend needed to visit one office recently to look at historic maps to trace the origins of a public right of way (which is a legal public footpath though farmland in the UK)

Like I said before, we weren’t living in the dark ages before smartphones came along.

And most of the texts you can access at the local library aren't even at that local library right now. Libraries are part of a humongous network. If you're willing to wait a few days, there's an avalanche of material that you definitely can't instantly find on the internet.