Prior to the internet I used my school library for that (or when I was very young, books at my grandparent’s house). So for me personally that wasn’t a new capability. It wasn’t until I started using Wikipedia around 2004 (when I was 17 years old) that the internet replaced (or rather complemented) libraries for that function.

But I can definitely see how for many people with less access to libraries (or worse quality libraries then what I had access to) the internet provided a new avenue for gaining knowledge which wasn’t available before.