alt Hacker NewsNowadays, academic libraries are moving their books to archival storage. New publications are electronic only. You need to be a formal member of the university community to access it, unlike in times past when any member of the public could stroll the aisles of physical books and journals.
Most academic libraries have large archival collections anyway, and the extent to which they de-emphasize their patron-facing stacks varies dramatically between institutions. Same with who can access them. You just can’t generalize like that.