You may be right about physical books, but not about libraries and librarians. Students don't intuitively know how access scholarly databases and do research. Librarians provide guidance on doing academic research and libraries are where that happens. If you think local public libraries are an adequate substitute for a college campus library, you're clueless. For one thing, they're unlikely to have pertinent resources for the subject matter taught at the college. They're also often far from campus and, more importantly, their hours are extremely limited and unlikely to be open evenings and weekends when students need them most.

There are computers at these libraries that offered many people their only access to the internet, you absolute dingus brain.

Librarians also do a whole lot more than put books on shelves. I know someone who works as a librarian at a school in CT and she teaches all the research classes. Online research classes. On computers. In the library.

I think this is highly dependent on the school, coursework, and major. I graduated not so long ago, I certainly took courses where I absolutely had to find written records or books as part of the class, especially things that were in the special collections of the library, I’m talking things for history or classics courses. I was a Physics and Math major, mind you, but still had lots of other higher level coursework outside my major in various other liberal arts. One of my roommates was a Classics major. He lived in the archival part of our campus library.

I get what you are saying, though.

From Northeastern University's library website: "Resources include close to 500,000 print volumes..."

Just because you didn't use print books doesn't mean that they don't exist and that they aren't being used by others. And no, not every book is digitized and available.

As someone who spent 13.5 as a reference librarian in the VSC until fairly recently I very much disagree, but you're entitled to your opinion.

In my experience art and photography people definitely wanted books. Some majors tend more towards journal articles, but many still relevant articles are in books that are not available online.

Worst take. Libraries are a part of preserving culture and civilization. Books are precious, knowledge is precious. Never minimize the library.

Go to Snell Library some time. There are half a million print volumes there. Northeastern also benefits from being part of the Boston Library Consortium and sharing print collections with a number of other high-profile libraries.

If you don’t know that your university library has print books, you’re not doing a great job at college. Or your college is failing you and you’re paying way too much.

Given your ignorance of this very basic fact, why would I take anything else you say seriously?

It's not that I necessarily disagree with you, but I have a hunch that there is bigger fat that could be trimmed before physical library books.

Good luck finding embargoed articles or dissertations without using a librarian or interlibrary loan. Sci-hub, LibGen, etc. don't contain everything. School accreditation in the area places a heavy emphasis on information literacy and the primary conduit for information literacy learning assessment is via libraries.

This is an incredibly foolish and short sighted take, not to mention the fact that research is infinitely more pleasurable with physical books.

Wow. Tell me you're an entitled twat without saying it.

This isn't a great take because keep in mind college libraries also give you access to digital books paid paywalled research materials that are necessary for for coursework

Also like I too never bought all the books that were required and preferred digital. But even like 5 years ago when I was in college some professors required physical books. Guess where I got the books when I was required to show up in class with them?

I think it’s a bit of a skewed statistic to say that your 12 friends who have only been in school during the height of Covid lockdowns and remote learning have never used a physical library and then project that to the whole student body and say that that is normal. While I personally did not use the physical library much at Castleton, many (more than 12…) of my classmates did on a regular basis.

The Northeastern University Library serves the entire Northeastern community—in Boston, across the global campus network, and online. The Library provides collections and services supporting research and teaching across disciplines. Its collections are extensive, with a large proportion available digitally. The Library's collections include 1,191,788 e-books; 483,844 print titles; 162,640 licensed e-journals; and 223,659 streaming audio and visual titles. Access to print and electronic materials is provided through Scholar OneSearch, the Library's discovery platform. The Library's Archives and Special Collections hold historical records and publications of Northeastern and unique materials preserving the history of Boston's social movements, public infrastructure, neighborhoods, and natural environments.

What are they going to do with all the books???

At age 62, I can remember when there were no digital resources in the library. My children are in college and I rarely see them with a book. Although they are able to access a great deal of information online (without a great deal of effort, I might add), their laptop computers don't allow them to see very much of it at one time. When I was a college student, I'd have at least 6 books open at once when I was writing a paper—like having 6 computer screens to look at. It's not the same when you have that many browser tabs to switch back and forth between (I know because I am now a professional writer). I also find that my children don't search as widely as we used to when researching a subject. They'll use the first couple of pages of internet search results and call it a day. When you're browsing in the stacks of a physical library, you come across things that wouldn't even make it onto page 10 of your search results. A book by a small publisher, some other student's dissertation, and so on. I also remember the pleasure of handling the volumes themselves. Paper from the Soviet Union had a particular smell (a good one). Early 20th century book bindings from Germany were extraordinarily crafted, like art objects. And when I wanted to free myself of distractions, I would decamp to the Chinese literature section, where I could not read anything at all. I don't miss having to type up my work from handwritten manuscripts, often cut up and taped back together as part of the editing process. But I do have wonderful memories of the books I learned from, all those pages turned by the students who had gone before me.

I was an English major and I never took out a physical book in my entire 5 years. The online library was so much more convenient.

not everything is digitized. There's a lot of information, special collections or otherwise, that isn't on digital databases yet. It's still in physical copies. My college library had a large online selection but it also had a sizeable physical collection, because not everything was digitized. I used physical books for research throughout my entire time in college, as did plenty of others at my school, and I only graduated last year

You’re gonna hurt Castleton’s feelings saying UVM is the only public university.

Thanks for sharing your take. It may be unpopular, but I think your concerns are legit. Keep in mind that many students have a much different relationship with paper volumes.

How is this different than making the argument about online universities in general. Why pay for sports, why have gyms, why have food service, etc. I used the library whenever I did research for papers, and not all documents are available online. I feel like you rather than making a critique about libraries specifically your real argument is about the utility of services a college provides and need for said services. IMO, this argument is a fast track to privatization and gatekeeping what otherwise would be considered a public asset.

And yet, I had to buy books for classes every semester. Many I never opened but were still required.

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So, English is the only language, right? English-language resources are the only ones that matter. You don't know anyone studying a field with the majority of work done in a non-English language, and you don't care to know them, and you don't care to know how they research and what they need.

Damn, kid!

These libraries serve the state, not just the campuses. Sit-in at CU 9;30 Monday. Protests are also scheduled.