Please learn to make use of these materials regularly. I think you’ll find that e-texts offer a number of advantages for research in philosophy:

• With a little practice, you’ll find the virtual library easy to get around in. Well-designed hypertext files are particularly useful, but even straight text files are often easier to manipulate than physical books.
• It is much more convenient to compare related texts in electronic than in print form. (The trilingual version of Descartes’s Meditations is an excellent example.
• Using the utilities provided with your browser or word-processing software makes it easy to search the text for key words or phrases and to excerpt crucial passages for further study.

Exciting prospects! As David Hume wrote in a different context, “When we run over libraries, persuaded of these principles, what havoc must we make?” Before committing any of our old print volumes to the flames, however, we might consider a few words of caution:

• Not every significant text is available in electronic form. Although many worthwhile projects are busy expanding the number of texts on-line, the process of conversion from print media to reliable e-text is time-consuming and labor-intensive. It will be a long time before Internet resources can begin to rival the holdings of even a small research library.
• Because of copyright restrictions, the electronic texts available on the Internet rarely include the best critical editions or the most recent translations of the work of major philosophers. (For those we must still rely on more costly print or CD-ROM media.) When using e-texts in the preparation of a written assignment, you’ll want to refer to the more definitive print versions before quoting directly.
• Not all of the readily available e-texts are of the highest quality; scanning errors are common, and proof-reading is sometimes spotty. Although I’ve tried to identify reliable versions, I’ve certainly not checked every word myself. Again, be sure to double-check against a more standard print version of the text.
• Finally, in my own experience, at least, for the kind of leisurely, ruminative reading that most philosophical texts require, a physical volume—the kind of thing you can spread out on your lap or mark up with a pencil or even heave across the room—is still hard to beat.