Should we get Early English Books Online?

Quick investigation of EEBO, and in short:

I want, I want, I want... but

it's intended for research libraries catering to graduate-level research
11,500 titles are now searchable, but the rest won't be online for another 5-10 years

On the other hand:
Searchable full-text
Author/title/subject/date search. In advanced, also illustration/country of origin/language, etc.
Browse authors
includes periodicals
Scans of the original pages (from microfilm)
1473-1700 (some later)
pretty much the whole English-speaking world in that period (England, Ireland, Scotland, Wales, North America...)
"virtually every book" within that scope
Recommended titles categorized by subject (quite useful)
box to check for variant spellings while searching (to get around pesky archaic orthography)
Tract supplement is available (ballads, religious stuff, political stuff)
Great for history, English lit, philosophy, fine arts, and to some extent, linguistics, political science, history of science...

If we were one of the University Centers, I think it'd be practically obligatory, especially in 3-5 years when they have all but the last tidbits scanned in. But... we're not by any stretch a University Center.

These materials are in the public domain. While many of them are only available through that one outlet (because there are few copies left) the more popular items in the English canon are more widely available. For locating free versions of them online, I recommend using the Digital Book Index (http://www.digitalbookindex.com). The interface isn't great and the content ranges far and wide and includes pay-to-download e-books, but it should do the trick.