[gumby]

> Even today, when there is lots of amazing materials on the web, the real deep stuff is in books.

Years ago my then 7yo was given an assignment: Find out how long woodchucks live in captivity. It was in late January in the USA so the idea is there would be many possible sources of info due to "Groundhog Day": newspapers, books, the Internet, TV... All the kids heard "blah, blah, the Internet, blah" (this was before smart phones and kids that age typically didn't use the Internet so it was exciting).

Much to his annoyance I forced my kid to come with me to the library where the librarian happily showed him how to find the answer. We made some photocopies and wrote the answer at the top. He actually brought home a book full of animal pictures.

I was in school there next day and discovered every other kid had brought a printout of the web (Wikipedia, an article about Groundhog Day, etc) but none actually had the answer to the question. Our photocopies did.

Whether my intransigence had any long term value to the kid is unclear to me.

[d0mine]

Today, it is just a single straightforward google request "how long woodchucks live in captivity" -> 14 years (shown on SRP directly) according to pbs.org groundhogs-facts (6 years in the wild)