I think the problem I have with modern election search is that often presented with what I don't want and I have to craft my query to get a decent list of sources. Mind you, this was way back in 2009 at Wichita State but the experience always seem to come up even when I use Google Scholar or equivalent modern search indices. They always seem to be off in terms of accuracy and relevance on the searches (especially now that I'm getting back into shortwave listening, finding articles on antenna theory is like pulling teeth).
But going back to a card catalog system, you can really only search in ways that someone else has created. You can't search by words within an article, you can't search using regular expressions (or at least some boolean operators), and you can only find things as fast as you can thumb through a stack of cards. At least with a search engine, if I type in a query that isn't going to find me what I'm actually looking for, I can quickly change my query and try again. Also, I'm relying on a librarian to know what I'm asking for. Someone can be very helpful in pointing you towards a stack that contains books about my subject but I will still need to do the work of searching through the books to find relevant ones and then still search through them individually to find the bit on info I need. I'm going to encounter a lot of information I don't care about. With a Google Scholar or University library search engine, I'm going to find the exact keywords I'm looking for and maybe some other related terms that I didn't think of. Search engines can be very helpful but you need to know what you are looking for otherwise you are just going to end up doing the same browsing you would have been doing 30+ years ago.
I don't think my comment implies we ditch digital search indexes. I just think Google as a replacement for properly curated search indexes is the problem here. For general web site searches Google is great but if you're looking for a particular topic it often comes up with sites that aren't even relevant (again my shortwave listening hobby is a great example of this problem). It's pretty hard to work just Google alone when you need a solid base to work from in terms of sites and documents for niche topics. It's why I tend to go back to books for my niche interests. You can't expect Google to handle every possible case because it won't do its primary well.
Not only that, but it's often the way that Librarians are trained to search, but not how the rest of us do.