I wonder if we really are the first generation to have this type of problem, though. It seems reasonable to me that people would be overwhelmed by the sheer volume of books published over the decades preceding the widespread adoption of the internet. There's just tons of material out there. Even in the academic world, the amount of papers published every year - even before the internet - would probably overwhelm anyone if they tried to keep on top of it.

I'd love to see some pre-internet articles complaining about the pace of publishing and strategies for coping with the onslaught of information at that time. It seems reasonable that it would exist, and I'm sure we'd all find it rather quaint :)