From Clifford Lynch who is well respected in the Library IT field

For many in the sciences now the library is essentially a negotiator of site licenses and authentication rights. The authentication stuff is still a little rocky in places, but it is clearly straightening itself out, and the better it gets, the more invisible the role of the library becomes; indeed, in institutions where authentication works well and site licenses are transparent to the local community, there’s often a wide belief that the scientific literature is actually free and just out there on the internet, and that the local library isn’t doing anything. In the humanities things are more complicated. …