Searching vs browsing
Further to early comment about searching vs browsing.
Obviously, sometimes searching is the only way to go, when after something very clear and very specific. It may very well, for example, find you a particular book. What it won't supply is the serendipitous discovery. It may also be too focussed and fail to give due weight to context (I think of some of the weird search strings that appear in my website stats).
I sometimes think that I've found out more by randomly browsing and coming across stuff, though this probably works better if the mind is already prepared to come across stuff: for example, when browsing in bookshops it helps to have certain names or titles already mentally flagged up.
I suppose I may be influenced here by being an archivist (or simply that being an archivist is congenial to this way of thinking), and having found that the answer to people looking for something is often not 'you will find it there, X marks the spot' but that you have to look around, you have to browse (which is one thing that you can't at the moment easily do with online databases that is much easier with hard copy catalogues), you have to cast the net of attention wider. (And even for quite specific quests, being aware of things like misspelling or possible misplacements from the apparently obvious location.)
It is possible that this mindset of drifting casually up on information can be taken too far, because over the years I think I have perhaps eschewed, to an excessive extent, simplifying matters in a range of situations by asking direct questions, in favour of gleaning and collating information in a much more indirect and oblique fashion.
This may be overdoing certain traditional conventions of English civility.