Another benefit would be convenience. In my opinion, the idea of being confined to hours of business is often constricting. While the library offers the satisfaction of a physical place to go to, which for some people may be ideal, the online library provides me with a plethora of information right at my fingertips. If I am unsure of an area in a subject, I can quickly validate the information by doing a quick research, whereas in the past, you would need to go all the way to the library, locate that information and scan through many different sources until you located the information you needed. This leads me to my next benefit: Fast search.
Fast searching is an option that is very helpful. Rather than spend all your time trying to locate where the books, periodicals, newspapers, or other media outlets happen to be located, you can just type in a few key words in a search to locate what you need. I can remember spending hours in a library when I was a little girl, searching through the alphabetized list of topics inside a rolodex on 3x5 index cards, trying to find information on a subject I was interested in learning more about, which was dinosaurs. While that particular topic was a bit easier to research, and I was only about 10 years old, so I can only imagine how much more difficult it would be to find information on more difficult topics, going into more pertinent detail. I was fortunate enough that when I needed to write more serious research, the Internet was available, and in college for my undergraduate degree the online library feature was available to me.
In conclusion, the online library offers this current generation many benefits. The convenience of researching from you home with access to an endless amount of research data from various mediums, the ability to provide the public with current training in their profession, and the ability to instantly search your topic to find more data.
Sources
Jensen, D. (2000). Online libraries: Convenient, safe and effective. T H E Journal 27(6), 18. Retrieved from Academic Search Complete database.