[quantumstate]

This is exactly the way the courses at my University (Cambridge, UK) worked. The lectures covered all relevant course material and problem sheets were given out (also available online http://www.damtp.cam.ac.uk/user/examples/).

Each course had a short list of recommended books and usually the lecturer would give a few comments about each book at the start of the course. These were for supplementary reference and were widely available in the libraries. I bought one text book during my course for my favourite area, so I could keep it after University. Otherwise the libraries were completely adequate.

I studied maths, I know that computer science and physics were the same. With arts subjects students used so many books that it wouldn't be reasonable to by them. I am not aware of any courses having required textbooks but I don't know for certain.

[stordoff]

Notes like http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/teaching/1112/LogicProof/logic-notes... were pretty common in CompSci. Often the notes were sufficient on their own, with pointers to further reading if required (see page 1 on the linked notes). With the libraries, it was quite easy to manage without buying any books.