My "original searches" happened in long skinny drawers full of index cards. In the 1970s. What I learned in high school, back then, has served me well to this day. And even then, libraries held significant amounts of misinformation (a whole section on astrology, for instance).

I've found that I can get Google to be very cooperative by simply investing a bit of time phrasing my query as if I were going to ask a human librarian. Works wonders.