Your public library didn’t have inter-library loan? Most public libraries have always been able to get you books not in their collection, you just have to ask.
For research on most topics, from history to social sciences to particle physics, the books at the library (or available through interlibrary loan) would be plenty recent enough for anyone not already specializing in the field, and such people would likely already have access to at least a college/university library, and likely a variety of academic journal subscriptions (often through said college/university library).
Growing up before libraries had computerized databases, sure, they had ILL, but the books that weren't in their collection weren’t in the card catalog either, so you had no easy way of discovering that a book you might want outside of a library’s own collection (1) existed, and (2) was available through ILL. It wasn't until after the internet was generally available to the public that most public libraries I encountered had computerized catalogs with ILL availability.