[librarian-guy]

You can check out books from the library and read them anywhere. Why do students need to read them in the library? If you are conducting certain research you need books as not everything is digitally available. Granted, most students are not doing this kind of thorough research.

[BrenBarn]

That's true, but are they checking out books? :-) I just mean that from what I've seen, young people use libraries as a study space at least as much as they use them to obtain books (either for on-premises readng or for checkout).