In the past, students read the books in the college library, as it was the best way to find information about the topics they studied. Having their own copy was prohibitively expensive for anything more than the textbooks and maybe one or two books of required reading (this may be an experience in countries with free education, when you're borrowing several thousand a semester, another thousand for textbooks is probably less significant, but it was true in Ireland), and the only other source of information was the college's journal archive which was definitely not aimed at beginners.
Nowadays, most students have a library of pirated PDFs, meaning they have the information on hand where they need it and with no need to return it or find it already borrowed in the college library. Most colleges will give you access to online databases of journals, so they aren't a draw either.
The other problem encountered was that of QC. At least in my institution more substantial books were always in short supply, as they'd never have more than 5-6 copies of a single book, so you'd arrive at the computing section and find... "Java 2 for Dummies". Or "Teach yourself C++ in 24 hours". Books that might have been fine to self-learners (when they were not significantly outdated), but nothing that wouldn't be covered in a textbook and nothing more substantial.
Probably this is a disconnect between the people running the library and the lecturers, but the attitude of the library was "Yes, we have software development books. What do you mean 15 years is out of date? The psychology books have been there since the 70s. And our figures show that more students have taken out 'Java 2 for Dummies' than 'Design Patterns' or 'The Pragmatic Programmer', so we don't need more copies."
But those two factors, the greater accessibility of pirated PDFs and blogs (and for some of the slightly more recent students, Stack Overflow), and the lacking quality of what was probably available on the shelves at any given point you chose to look meant that the library was definitely way more useful as a study space than for the contents of the shelves for the other students and myself during my degree.
Nowadays, most students have a library of pirated PDFs, meaning they have the information on hand where they need it and with no need to return it or find it already borrowed in the college library. Most colleges will give you access to online databases of journals, so they aren't a draw either.
The other problem encountered was that of QC. At least in my institution more substantial books were always in short supply, as they'd never have more than 5-6 copies of a single book, so you'd arrive at the computing section and find... "Java 2 for Dummies". Or "Teach yourself C++ in 24 hours". Books that might have been fine to self-learners (when they were not significantly outdated), but nothing that wouldn't be covered in a textbook and nothing more substantial.
Probably this is a disconnect between the people running the library and the lecturers, but the attitude of the library was "Yes, we have software development books. What do you mean 15 years is out of date? The psychology books have been there since the 70s. And our figures show that more students have taken out 'Java 2 for Dummies' than 'Design Patterns' or 'The Pragmatic Programmer', so we don't need more copies."
But those two factors, the greater accessibility of pirated PDFs and blogs (and for some of the slightly more recent students, Stack Overflow), and the lacking quality of what was probably available on the shelves at any given point you chose to look meant that the library was definitely way more useful as a study space than for the contents of the shelves for the other students and myself during my degree.