I know that my dad always complains about this sort of thing, I'd always put it down to age ;) . He wants access to a range of stuff from historical records, to general science stuff, to specific articles about the latest medical advances to treat his heart problem. I find it quite irritating because I usually don't even has access to most of the medical stuff and have to find someone who does. He's more than capable of reading the articles once he gets them, but it is exceeding rare that he is able to find copies available online. He has no problem identifying which articles he wants to read thanks to things like pubmed.