Excellent memories! I used PC Globe so much when I was in elementary school. I didn’t have an encyclopedia, and when some friend handed me that diskette it opened a new world to me. I ran that software so much that I memorized the world map, with capitals and population orders of magnitude.

My geography teacher was so impressed, they didn’t know how a small kid could have memorized the world. I even knew some anthems by playing them on the PC Speaker. Over time we all got Encarta, then Wikipedia, but for a brief amount of time, a floppy disk contained the world for many of us.

Awesome!

Like most people I stopped using libraries in the early 2000s with the advent of the internet. And up until recently I still used to buy or download books I wanted to read. But I’ve rediscovered local libraries and they’re awesome. Since almost nobody uses them they have increased lending limits and most books are always available. You can basically enter the library with a box and fill it with books to take home and read. They now recognize me at the front desk and it’s awesome.