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Comment by danhak | Hacker News Reader

> Undergraduates rarely needed to access the physical books

Spoken like someone who never took a humanities course.

For my library and classes we were more likely to use something like JSTOR than hunt through the racks. The overlap of being common enough to be available but obscure enough to be interesting was fairly low. For example writing about Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey the physical library wasn't much help.

When I do research at one of the local university libraries, it’s almost always just accessing online journals and other digital information. The only reason I have to physically go there is because some of the material is only available if you’re on the campus network.

Though the library system does have some nice places to work :-) I confess I’m more of an ambient social space worker these days. If I want solitude and quiet I can get that at home.

The sentence in context is that the undergraduates actually have the physical books, and therefore didn't need the library's copy.

I understood the context. What usually happens is students purchase books that are assigned for everyone taking a particular class, then use the library to borrow specific books to complete research papers, criticism etc. on their chosen topics.

Yeah, I was a history major, I would cite 30 plus sources per paper, many of which had never been checked out of the library ever before and weren't available digitally :0

Recently put two kids through college, and there were almost no physical books. Not for student centric needs though.

It was so they could DRM and/or change the content every semester to earn the school more money.

The worst is when the Prof makes their own online book required. $90+ a pop, and you can't resell at the end of the semester.

Grr.

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