[jcranmer]

> Grad students and researchers have different needs, though.

Yes, access to the more obscure literature like the Springer books for advanced math, or highly specialized history books (such as a history of Ottoman naval warfare) is pretty essential at the graduate or later level.

[goerz]

Actually, in my entire ~10 years of having been a grad student and then researcher in theoretical physics, I didn't take out books from a library even once! I have yet to come across any material that is not available in electronic form (well, one very specialized book, which I did buy, cut off the spine, and ran through a ScanSnap)

[jasone]

I attended grad school 2003-2009. The first few years I routinely pulled hardcopy at the library. By ~2007 I was able to get everything electronically. Not so long ago, dead trees mattered.

[seanmcdirmid]

For CS, no. I’ve never had the urge to go through a springer conference proceedings rather than just download the papers I needed directly. Checking out the old outdated books at the engineering library was nostalgic, however.

[e12e]

I remember that it was nice to be able to check out Nelson's computer lib, as it was ridiculously expensive and hard to get hold of second hand. A couple of other classics like Knuth, the smalltalk manual and Forth books is also nice to be able to read in hard copy.

But then, I remember I got half way through a copy of, I believe it was:

"Narrative of the expedition of an American squadron to the China seas and Japan, performed in the years 1852, 1853 and 1854, under the command of M.C. Perry" Francis Lister Hawks , New York , 1856

https://bibsys-almaprimo.hosted.exlibrisgroup.com/primo-expl...

As tangentially related to the year of Japanese I studied. Had to go to the library to read it - copy was too old and rare for me to take home (which was part of why I only got halfway through - but seeing that it's 600 pages I don't feel quite so bad about that).

Ed: looks like it is available at archive.org - not as nice as the physical book, but for the curious:

https://archive.org/details/narrativeofexped0156perr

https://archive.org/details/narrativeofexped01perr

(looks like two different sources?)

[aspaceman]

You still need advanced math for topics in CS and often the only book is some expensive springer book.

[seanmcdirmid]

Some maybe? Definitely not my area, we can get all the math we need online in one form or another. Or the math is coming from someone’s paper or online book anyways.

[goerz]

Aren’t all Springer books online at SpringerLink?

[bigred100]

Only most of them