Stanford ushers in the age of bookless libraries

From NPR (USA) - "The periodical shelves at Stanford University's Engineering Library are nearly bare. Library chief Helen Josephine says that in the past five years, most engineering periodicals have been moved online, making their print versions pretty obsolete - and books aren't doing much better. According to Josephine, students can now browse those periodicals from their laptops or mobile devices. For years, students have had to search through volume after volume of books before finding the right formula - but no more. Josephine says that "with books being digitized and available through full text search capabilities, they can find that formula quite easily." In 2005, when the university realized it was running out space for its growing collection of 80,000 engineering books, administrators decided to build a new library. But instead of creating more space for books, they chose to create less"