[ci5er]

> Undergraduates rarely needed to access the physical books, since they're told to buy almost all the books they need for each class anyway.

This was not my experience after the first 18 months. Maybe things are different than they were in the 80s. Or maybe my school was different (we had a lot of cross-functional projects), or maybe my professors were humoring me by letting me design my own upper-level (but under-grad) curriculum ... but I spent a LOT of time in the library. Sometimes to pull textbooks, but mostly to pull journal articles that described similar or adjacent research. (Or maybe I was a weird kid? That's definitely possible - but all the engineers at our school were weird kids, so I wouldn't have picked up on it.)

[plorkyeran]

Reading journal articles has been something you do on your computer for quite a while now. The library was tangentially involved in the process (in that you get access to the online journals via the library's subscription) but there was no reason to physically go to the library for it.

[xg15]

The article kind of disagrees with that:

> Plus, a growing body of evidence shows that physical books and papers are more conducive to learning than digital formats are.

I'd also agree with the article's point that getting face-to face advice from a librarian can be a lot more helpful for research than crawling through the internet by yourself - especially of you're an undergrad.

[alexhutcheson]

If I had to read journal articles, I would download and print the PDF - still paper, but didn't require a trip to the library. It never even occurred to me to go to the library for the hard-copy of the full journal.

[detaro]

Nowadays, journal articles in STEM fields typically are online through library services, public preprint servers or sci-hub.

[sweeneyrod]

Things were almost certainly different in the 80s. For instance, the PDF was invented in 93.