It's a starting point for the serious student. I started collecting scholarly resources years ago which I scanned into pdf format making them searchable. You can search all pdfs at once, by subject folder, or a single resource. This sort of software compliments that type of library perfectly because it gives you easy access to newer resources to compliment the older ones.
But yes, it's an initial investment that most have to seriously sacrifice to receive. The upside; however, is that after the initial investment all subsequent revisions and updates for purchased resources are free forever.
So when you purchase a scholarly reference on a topic like Biblical archeology, for example, that is published and maintained by an originator such as Oxford, for example, all future discoveries and subsequent revisions to the product are provided at no further cost.
In the old days, we had to actually repurchase the new edition to get access to the new information (if it wasn't available through a library resource)!