I absolutely support the free availability of research papers that were funded by the public, but is there some justification for making the materials in question here free to all? Or is the "library" here simply stealing from authors?
In the early 90s we had the legendary UK Usborne BASIC programming books, but trying to find books about Amiga programming in AREXX, Assembler or Amiga C was not going to be possible.
It is great that now these books are available.
I also like looking at all the old CAD books from late 80s to early 90s to see how they have evolved, I can understand that libraries would not have the shelf capacity to store those books.
Also the libraries only keep the more popular books, a lot of the books from the 50s-70s are good and even Robert Ludlum books are no longer there only the more recent ones where authors have paid the estate to carry on the Bourne Genre. I understand you have to make space available for new authours. Also if you do buy a ebook who knows if the provider is going to delete it (i.e Sony)
But yeah free availability of research papers help a lot and other technical papers (RFCs) is great, it's great when I see ISOs available (books not CDs)