The database you are searching, in this case, consists of Web pages residing on Internet servers. They search the files on your hard disk, and each hit is a file instead of a Web page. It would be tedious to have to examine each hit by clicking on a link to see the entire card, then clicking the browser's Back button to return to the list, and repeating this for every hit. Of course, we do exactly that for Web searches, but in that case the links lead to a great deal of information and the hit list shows a brief summary of what is available. It seems that a Web search engine is not the appropriate tool for a card catalog search.
Many businesses have valuable information in relational databases.
In fact, we already had in place at this same firm the software to do such queries. Attorneys and secretaries can enter a client number and get a list of all the matters for that client. Or they can enter a matter number and get a list of all the file folders for that matter. In both cases the information is obtained from the same relational database used for the firm's accounting and records management systems. At first glance, a card catalog is just a very simple database.