This tip probably isn’t useful to you today, but in many library systems you can request a book at your local library and they will deliver it to you from some other branch that has a copy of it
I think my small public library was donation-based. Very few interesting books there, and no way to browse for and request specific books. Maybe university libraries did that.
My town library was ridiculously small. Not everyone has the same opportunities.
But we do used books anyway, they were usually the encyclopedia, the dictionary, and text books.
This tip probably isn’t useful to you today, but in many library systems you can request a book at your local library and they will deliver it to you from some other branch that has a copy of it
I think my small public library was donation-based. Very few interesting books there, and no way to browse for and request specific books. Maybe university libraries did that.