[danaris]

I think it's fair to say that, particularly through the '80s and '90s, the IT/programming books were outliers in how fast they became outdated, because the field was just moving so very quickly. (It still is, to a large extent, but now we have the internet to disseminate that information.)

For research on most topics, from history to social sciences to particle physics, the books at the library (or available through interlibrary loan) would be plenty recent enough for anyone not already specializing in the field, and such people would likely already have access to at least a college/university library, and likely a variety of academic journal subscriptions (often through said college/university library).