We used to haunt the library on a regular basis. Then, the Internet came along. So, sadly, when we hoofed it over one evening this summer, we were hard-pressed to recall the last time we'd crossed the hallowed threshold of our city's main book drag.

If you haven't been lately, either, let us tell you: The clientele has changed. We don't want to be rude, but let us just say that we were likely the only ones in the library actually doing research that night. Which might be why the library staff pounced on us when we approached the reference desk with a question about some 20-year-old congressional hearing testimony.

In the end, it took three librarians to solve our conundrum. That included a particularly energetic Swedish (we think) woman who put off her smoking break to practically dance through the aisles, searching for just the right volume, then pulling the microfiche, feeding it into the machine and even finding the corresponding day's newspaper, just in case that offered any additional information.

It did, and we left Burton Barr with a renewed respect for the library sciences. The World Wide Web did not, in fact, kill the library star. Not yet, anyway.