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Comment by wing-_-nuts | Hacker News Reader

>so much library content is electronic, and not accessible to the general public

This is an irrationally huge deal to me. There's so much material one has student access to at a decent college library. I, as 'Joe Public' am locked out of almost all of it and am forced to scrounge around on less-than-legal websites for books and papers. It's infuriating. Hell, I'd pay to have that access, but many universities adamantly refuse to provide it, even at cost.

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University libraries will often have 40x copies of an essential textbook, because they know they have 40x students taking that course. I guess if you let random people use the library that becomes a problem.

I think they meant electronic sources that you can only access if you are a student or faculty member at the university.

That has to do with licensing and copyright. Whether that is good or bad is not really for the university to decide. They have to adhere to the contract.

I think the traditional solution is library memberships that don't permit you to checkout the books, but do provide you with access to books and resources provided you stay in the library. Reading rooms and all that

It's pretty rare, at least for my kids, that a course has an actual book you can hold in your hands. They all use a DRM scheme and require some Nth edition that's new (and probably only has a few minor changes from N-1). Sometimes we can find it on Library Genesis, often we can't. There's almost never an actual book.

Somebody is rent seeking.

Does this not apply in computer science? Is it something you get in fields like law? When I think of the key text books in computer science they usually just have two editions max and have been set in stone for a couple of decades as the basics aren't changing.

Not sure, none of my kids are CS.

That was to inhibit resale of used books.

That and the tests. Many teachers like the pre canned tests these books come with (please finish problems 10-50 even by the next class). Now it is online run by the publisher. Cheating is now even more rampant than it was before the code thing with many sites having the answers.

I would wait 1-2 weeks after class started to buy books. Especially if the teacher decided you need 6 of them to finish the class. It was usually pretty clear which ones they were going to use by that point.

The library of the university to which I went used to have one or two books out of X which wouldn't be available for check out, only for reading on site.

Sure, if a bunch of random people show up and take them all at the same time, which prevents actual students from using them, it may be a problem. In practice, I don't remember ever having this issue.

Access to the library was free for all, you didn't have to be a student or anything.

University libraries will often have 40x copies of an essential textbook

If that's true, it's a huge change from when I was in the university. But it seems implausible in the extreme, IE, I'd call bs here. University libraries wouldn't want to buy class textbook 'cause they're worthless at the end of the term. Students are expected to buy (electronic, DRM'd) textbooks are at student stores, not check them out of libraries. Libraries are not expected to service individual course but to be places of general research. Professors have the whole Internet to give links for supplemental material. Photocopied "Course Readers" is another avenue.

> But it seems implausible in the extreme

Implausible in the extreme to have forty or so copies of a book?

And most textbooks aren’t republished every year. You can use them from one year to the next. Why would they be worthless at the end of the term?

Think of a classic CS text like the Dragon Book. They’re on the second edition since 1986.

I suppose it depends on the material. Textbooks for intro-level general courses (e.g. calculus, physics, statistics, etc.) tend to get republished yearly.

Since the fundamentals of the material are unlikely to change within the span of a year, the revisions to the textbooks are mostly cosmetic in nature—updated graphic design, rearranged problem sets (to deter the used book market), etc.

Also note: I'm speaking about the US. Things could very well be different elsewhere.

I my opinion this helps fuel the rise of misinformation. How can you expect the average citizen to be informed when they're locked out of the most credible information sources? The academic publishing system is complicit in the disinformation age.

In my observations, unfortunately most of the people spreading misinformation are not really interested in "the truth", but in re-affirming what they already think is the truth. This applies equally to "all sides". This is also compounded by a widespread erosion of institutional trust (whether justified or not).

So I don't think it would really help much.

> Hell, I'd pay to have that access

If it's a public university then your tax dollars already do.

Most vendors license based on students served, not public that pays taxes. If a university is licensing content based on the number of students or faculty at the university, it's likely that they are not allowed to offer it to tax payers. I understand your point is that you are paying, but that will not mean you can walk into a university and demand access. They would need to renegotiate with the vendor.

Many public universities allow public access to all resources when you are physically at the library. Their licenses are broad enough (and expensive enough) to allow access to anyone from campus. Also, if you're on campus, it can be difficult to determine who is a student / staff, etc...

The college library in my hometown had public access via a paid card. It was inexpensive and about equal to the cost students paid in fees each year or their access. I know a few local authors that heavily relied on that library for researching their works. I bet many college libraries have similar programs or could be motivated by locals to add the option.

Don’t pay ‘em, join ‘em.

I take 1 student a year for practice placements for a month and the university gives me full library access.

Work out a sharing system with your colleagues and you could get this access for 1 rotation every 5+ years.

I've considered signing up for college classes in retirement, not only for library access but also to get access to the student health plans, which are remarkably cheap compared to ACA plans.

The only question is whether the cost of the college courses exceed the benefit of the cheaper health insurance, and whether I wish to dedicate the time to take the classes

A friend is a faculty and says the institution online access to books and articles often does not work. Login issues, VPN issues, cookie issues if you started the VPN after trying to access the paywalled paper (might work in incognito mode but not in normal windows), and so on. Thankfully sci-hub and libgen are easier to get the information quickly.

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