If you were researching your history coursework yesterday, or, say, writing a newspaper article about Wikipedia, then you will have found yourself at a loss.

Instead of the largest encyclopedia in human history, visitors to Wikipedia.org were greeted with a black page, and a gloomy invitation to "imagine a world without free knowledge".

For 24 hours the website went dark in protest at the proposed Stop Online Piracy Act, or Sopa, which is currently being considered by the US Congress. Wikipedia believes the law "could fatally damage the free and open internet". Tweeting in advance of the blackout, the site's founder, Jimmy Wales, made a less hyperbolic suggestion: "Student warning!" he wrote, "Do your homework early."

Of course, as a serious journalist, I would never normally use Wikipedia as a serious research tool. Well, I wouldn't only use Wikipedia. But in this case, it would undoubtedly have provided a semi-accurate and well-sourced set of facts about its own history and that of its founder -- not to mention a decent explanation of Sopa, and of the workings of the legislative branch of the US Government. Without it, I was forced to turn for facts to a series of more obscure websites and -- would you believe it -- printed books!

I can reveal that all the physical encyclopedias in my office date back to before the Obama presidency. So how would I fare when I tried to complete the everyday tasks for which I normally turn to the world's favourite reference tool?

I can't have been alone, for example, in using Wikipedia to remind myself of the plotlines to the original Sherlock Holmes stories, during the BBC's recent run of 'Sherlock'. Of what was Conan Doyle's Moriarty a professor, precisely? What led Holmes and his nemesis to the top of the Riechenbach Falls in 'The Final Problem', and how exactly did the detective explain his return from almost certain death to Dr Watson three years later?

Wikipedia is an invaluable source of information for television viewers. How could anybody have understood 'Lost' without it? As it turns out, the best way to refresh my memory of 'The Final Problem', using the "free knowledge" of the web, was to read it in full at the free e-book site, Project Gutenberg. This kept me occupied for most of the morning.

Naturally, I spent my lunchbreak setting a pub quiz, for which Wikipedia would have been a trove of useless trivia. What was the UK's number one single when the Berlin Wall came down? Which is the best-selling work of fiction of all time? And what's the capital of Burkina Faso?

Before I resorted to cribbing questions from repeats of 'QI' on Dave, I consulted Wolfram Alpha, a "computational knowledge engine" that answers questions directly, rather than offering a set of relevant pages like Google. It's very good on geography: Burkina Faso's capital is Ouagadougou, Wolfram assures me. But Wolfram is weak on literature, and fails to name Dickens' 'A Tale of Two Cities'. And it's incomprehensible on music, so a bit of wild Googling is required to find that Lisa Stansfield topped the charts in November 1989, with 'All Around the World'.

What if, during the afternoon, I wanted to settle an argument with a colleague on the origins of an internet craze, such as "Planking"? Instead of Wikipedia -- which is very good on internet crazes -- I'm forced to turn to the considerably less reliable Urban Dictionary, which dubiously suggests that "Planking" was originally known as "Extreme Lying Down" and originated in Australia.

Meanwhile, if I'm having an intellectual round to my place for dinner, I tend to use Wikipedia to brush up on their specialism beforehand; the site has very useful potted guides to the likes of Existentialism, Modernism and Marxism. The only solution I could think of yesterday was to visit Wikipedia's French language site, and use Google Translate to filter its summary of "Existentialisme" back into English. Here's what I got: "Existentialism is a philosophical and literary, which postulates that human beings form the essence of his life by his own actions, as opposed to the idea that they are predetermined by him any theological doctrines, philosophical or moral." Good enough for dinner conversation?

Finally, I often enjoy winding down in the evening 'relax with a round of the Wikipedia game': did you know that if you click on the first hyperlink in any Wikipedia article, and keep doing so with every article to which you're redirected, you'll eventually come to the entry on philosophy? Sadly, this doesn't work with a printed encyclopedia.

However, I did try it with the Britannica website (britannica.com), which claims to be a lot more accurate than Wikipedia.

But despite searching "hedgerows", "Manchester United" and "George W Bush", I never came close to anything resembling philosophy.(© Independent News Service)