Is it just me or are university libraries' books useless?

In summary, the books in the library are outdated and useless. Students do not use them, and the money spent on them could be better spent on more relevant materials.
  • #1
flyingpig
2,579
1
All the Math and Science texts in my library are useless. That is to say outdated. I don't think I have met a single person who even uses old dusty unrelated books, the textbook is more than enough.

My school (according to the librarian) spends more than a million dollars (that's the typical tuition fee of 200 students) on just "library materials", are those "library materials" only for art students for their history research papers?

Most "books" are now electronic and I can just find a pdf on torrent or fileshare. So this is another "off topic" comment, are physical books useless when we have electronic copies already? It saves trees right?
 
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  • #3
No I mean everyone uses the library, I mean the books in the libraries. They are pretty much useless. I have never seen people even go up to the counter and checking out books
 
  • #4
Hmmmm... good point...

edit: I'm not sure that were saving the environent by using rapidly replaced tablets and readers, and their batteries. I'd need to see a study of that.
 
  • #5
flyingpig said:
All the Math and Science texts in my library are useless. That is to say outdated.
I'm not sure math has changed much in the past few decades...
 
  • #6
Greg Bernhardt said:
I used my university library maybe 4-5 times my entire time there.

I think I used my university library 4-5 times just last week.

@OP: The books arent useless in the slightest. I personally have 4 texts checked out that have to be pre 1970's. Physics hasn't changed much in the last 60 years as far as undergrads and some grad students are concerned.

Many texts have not been digitized either. Plus it's like asking why should dvd's be sold when I could just pirate them off the internet? Because not everyone steals everything they use.

Furthermore... many people can't stare at a computer to read a book and especially in a major like physics, the ability to physically flip back and forth between pages is necessary.
 
  • #7
Pengwuino said:
I think I used my university library 4-5 times just last week.

@OP: The books arent useless in the slightest. I personally have 4 texts checked out that have to be pre 1970's. Physics hasn't changed much in the last 60 years as far as undergrads and some grad students are concerned.

Many texts have not been digitized either. Plus it's like asking why should dvd's be sold when I could just pirate them off the internet? Because not everyone steals everything they use.

Furthermore... many people can't stare at a computer to read a book and especially in a major like physics, the ability to physically flip back and forth between pages is necessary.

E-Ink, and OLEDs are changing that... and the only way to get more books digitized is demand.

edit: That said... I'd hate to read Gravitation on my Kindle...
 
  • #8
nismaratwork said:
E-Ink, and OLEDs are changing that... and the only way to get more books digitized is demand.

edit: That said... I'd hate to read Gravitation on my Kindle...

Yes, they sure are.

Also, we must remember, PHYSICAL BOOKS MAKE US LOOK SMART! :biggrin:

I was walken down the hallway and i accidentally bumped into someone and they said "hey dumby, watch where you going". So I smashed his face in with my mathematical physics text. Whos the dumby now?
 
  • #9
russ_watters said:
I'm not sure math has changed much in the past few decades...

No what I meant was that they are poorly written. My university has texts at the level of "Math for dummies" kind of books
 
  • #10
Pengwuino said:
Yes, they sure are.

Also, we must remember, PHYSICAL BOOKS MAKE US LOOK SMART! :biggrin:

I was walken down the hallway and i accidentally bumped into someone and they said "hey dumby, watch where you going". So I smashed his face in with my mathematical physics text. Whos the dumby now?

AND then what happened?
 
  • #11
Pengwuino said:
Yes, they sure are.

Also, we must remember, PHYSICAL BOOKS MAKE US LOOK SMART! :biggrin:

I was walken down the hallway and i accidentally bumped into someone and they said "hey dumby, watch where you going". So I smashed his face in with my mathematical physics text. Whos the dumby now?

:rofl:

Ha!
 
  • #12
On campus, we have the main library (mostly useless), but we also have two research libraries: one for physics, one for biosciences. The research libraries are the place to go.
 
  • #13
flyingpig said:
AND then what happened?

My lawyer has advised me not to speak about it.
 
  • #14
A significant portion of that million dollars probably goes into (electronic) journal access--it's crazy expensive to be on the cutting edge, but that's what you need to have a research-intensive university. I don't know how much the acquisitions department spends on new volumes and books, but I was delighted to find an obscure book on silicon oxide and silica growth from the 70s, the magnum opus of a Soviet scientist who still gets cited a fair bit in the field.

Textbooks (and to a lesser extent, review books / articles) are great for summarizing knowledge and getting the started in a field--the primary sources (which should be referenced in the first) are where you find the minutiae of the field, and discover the rest of the iceberg. Then again, that's mostly from a research perspective.

As for your comment about torrenting/filesharing books, no respectable educational institution in the world is going to go out and make it official policy to break copyright and not buy access or books (and not get sued), especially since they employ the same faculty and get the same grad students who write these books, papers, and articles. Most of these books and journals also tend to be very, very specialized and somewhat esoteric (for instance, the book I mentioned above)--while the authors usually aren't making any money (directly) by publishing these, you also probably won't find them on any sharing sites.
 
  • #15
Pengwuino said:
Yes, they sure are.

Also, we must remember, PHYSICAL BOOKS MAKE US LOOK SMART! :biggrin:

I was walken down the hallway and i accidentally bumped into someone and they said "hey dumby, watch where you going". So I smashed his face in with my mathematical physics text. Whos the dumby now?
A physics book made him smart too. If he was watching where he was going then how come you bumped?
 
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  • #16
flyingpig said:
No I mean everyone uses the library, I mean the books in the libraries. They are pretty much useless. I have never seen people even go up to the counter and checking out books
I used to spend hours in university and public libraries. The books and journals I read were hugely useful, especially as supplements to laboratory reports and research.

Plus I learned many things that were not taught in class.
 
  • #17
I think you'll find that all the books you find are useless becuase everyone has already checked out the good books.

This happened without fail at my uni on the first day of term. All the good books got checked out by a group of friends who used the reserve a book option to circulate the book between them. I know becuase I did it!


On saying that I went to the University library I think twice in years at University, a horrible opressive, depressing place that shut when you needed to use it. Then they built the Information Commons (or IC as the cool kiddies called it)http://www.sheffield.ac.uk/infocommons

Meeting rooms, group areas, silent study areas, sofas, snacks, hundreds of PC's, it even had a shower! A genuinely nice place to work at 4 in the morning.
 
  • #18
Astronuc said:
I used to spend hours in university and public libraries. The books and journals I read were hugely useful, especially as supplements to laboratory reports and research.

Plus I learned many things that were not taught in class.

There's a competition between the convenience of having it all in one window with hyperlinks, and the nostalgic comfort of the library furnishings.

Convenience generally wins, though. My poor back.
 
  • #19
In our university, we have an extremely good library. It has practically all the math books that I could wish for.

When I was an undergrad, we had to make an assignment. And the professor wanted to popularize the library and he said that we could use books from the library. So we headed of for the library to find some books on the topic. But one of our (more ambitious) classmates had already collected all the books on the topic and checked it out herself. She didn't need that many books, but she just wanted to prevent us from using the books and getting a good grade. The library felt pretty useless then... We did have our revenge on her :biggrin:
 
  • #20
I've rarely spent over an hour at a time at a university library. But over the last several years, I've almost always had at least one book checked out at any given time. Long after having completed all my coursework.

I don't believe there is any legal alternative to checking out books from the library (besides buying them, and that option realistically exists only for some books), and occasionally, looking up old journal papers that are not available electronically.
 
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  • #21
flyingpig said:
My school (according to the librarian) spends more than a million dollars (that's the typical tuition fee of 200 students) on just "library materials", are those "library materials" only for art students for their history research papers?

Probably not- electronic subscriptions to Journals are not free.
 
  • #22
If all the books you're interested in can be found online in pdf format you simply haven't specialized enough yet
 
  • #23
I've rarely checked-out books from our library; I find it to be a good studying environment, though.

However, during my first year, I did a research paper on renewable energy. One of the sections of my paper was devoted to providing a history and progression of the topic, and I obtained a great deal of information from a book that was published about 20 years ago (can't remember the title), and it wasn't in the database.

I've also yet to have any issues with inconsiderate students who check out all of the books that are reserved for a course and keep them for long periods of time. All of my professors have placed a time limit (usually a certain amount of hours) on how long each book can be checked out so that each student has the opportunity to use the materials.
 
  • #24
Astronuc said:
I used to spend hours in university and public libraries. The books and journals I read were hugely useful, especially as supplements to laboratory reports and research.

Plus I learned many things that were not taught in class.

I love libraries, but at this point I'm usually reduced to bringing my own books.


Maybe you could have an e-reader program that works within a library only, and for X hours/days after? You wouldn't need to ditch books, just add MORE.
 
  • #25
Office_Shredder said:
If all the books you're interested in can be found online in pdf format you simply haven't specialized enough yet

Correction: If all of the books you're interested in can be found legally online...


There are scans of EVERYTHING... but who wants to oohscray over authors? This is part of the problem, we can digitize faster, or we're just hurting authors of existing books.
 
  • #26
When I was in engineering school, I made extensive use of the reference library. It contained copies of critical references, journals, etc, none of which could be "checked out". No problem with people hogging resources that way. Get some direction from the librarian if you don't know your way around, grab the reference(s) you need, read them and make notes (no photocopiers back then) and return them to the front desk. The librarian or an assistant would then re-shelve the books so that they were in the right places for the next person to locate and use.

And I found that even very old references could be useful. It can help to have materials presented in a variety of ways, leading to some "Aha!" moments when you're in a mental block regarding some concept that didn't "click" during lectures, etc.
 
  • #27
undergraduate engineering, i never used the library much except as a quiet place. for grad work, i found it was often a necessity. undergrad texts didn't have matrix derivatives and multivariate transforms.

and you really can't appreciate a good university library until you compare it with a public one. the public libraries here seem focused on either elementary education, or popular press. academic stuff is slim pickins, usually, and then typically only at central.
 
  • #28
I am an alumnus of Temple U in Philadelphia and so I have full library privileges. They acquire new books on a continuing basis so getting up to date material is never a problem. The text I currently have out, "Hilbert Transforms" by Frederick King, was published in 2009. I don't know if that's considered out of date yet, but perhaps Hilbert transforms is one of those fields where the book is out of date when the ink is dry. If that's your issue, then you don't need books, you need journals. Anyway, this book is an elementary introduction aimed at undergraduates and so some of the contents may remain relevant at least to the end of the month. I'm reading it as fast as I can just in case.
 
  • #29
I have to say, the public libraries around here are quite good, but then, they're hardly the norm.
 
  • #30
My alma mater had millions of books, but few quality ones. When it came to attracting quality students, numbers of books had more appeal than quality.
 
  • #31
Andy Resnick said:
Probably not- electronic subscriptions to Journals are not free.

and not cheap!

To add to that, if you want current research that is published in journals... you better have a good library handy! I actually tried to see if a certain paper that was published in Nuclear Physics B was available for free. I figured hey, its SO easy to make it free because it can just be saved to your hard drive! Then boom, put it on a pirating site.

Nope. No dice.
 
  • #32
I was spending ~ 5 hours per day on average studying in my college library for all of my last semester.

I love libraries. When I go to new cities, first thing I do is make a library card. I attempt to read social science books (rarely) and some novels (often).

When I came to my college, first thing I did was to find the engineering library. I found really good books. I also sometimes borrow really good non-engineering books but because of other priorities I have never managed to do much readings.
 
  • #33
Pengwuino said:
and not cheap!

To add to that, if you want current research that is published in journals... you better have a good library handy! I actually tried to see if a certain paper that was published in Nuclear Physics B was available for free. I figured hey, its SO easy to make it free because it can just be saved to your hard drive! Then boom, put it on a pirating site.

Nope. No dice.

There's been a lot written about a certain publisher (*cough* elsevier *cough*) who's journals are "overly expensive". That's one argument in favor of open publishing- after all, the taxpayers paid for the work that went into the articles.

I've been frustrated more than once: our library no longer subscribes to "annual reviews", for example. Personally, I've found that emailing the authors directly circumvents subscription issues.
 
  • #34
Libraries are great for hitting on hot librarian chicks. You know, the type that wears the glasses and the hair in a tight bun. But then after the library closes, the glasses come off and the hair comes down and Va Va Voom!
 
  • #35
Topher925 said:
Libraries are great for hitting on hot librarian chicks. You know, the type that wears the glasses and the hair in a tight bun. But then after the library closes, the glasses come off and the hair comes down and Va Va Voom!

You mean like Cloris Leachman in the remake of The Longest Yard?
 

1. Why are university library books useless?

University library books may seem useless to some individuals because they may not cover the specific topic or information that they are looking for. However, university libraries often have a wide range of books and resources that cater to the diverse needs of students and researchers.

2. Are university library books outdated?

This depends on the specific book and the subject it covers. While some university library books may be outdated, many libraries actively update their collections to keep up with current research and information. Additionally, older books can still provide valuable historical context and perspectives on a topic.

3. Can't I just find all the information I need online?

While the internet can be a valuable resource, university library books often provide in-depth and reliable information that may not be easily accessible online. Additionally, university libraries often have access to online databases and journals that are not freely available on the internet.

4. Do university library books have any value outside of school?

Yes, university library books can have value beyond the classroom. Many books in university libraries cover topics that are relevant to real-world issues and can provide valuable insights and information for individuals in various fields of work.

5. How can I make the most out of university library books?

To make the most out of university library books, it is important to have a clear understanding of what you are looking for and to utilize the library's resources, such as librarians, to help you find relevant materials. It is also helpful to read reviews and summaries of books before borrowing them to ensure they will be useful for your research or studies.

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