I agree, this business idea would definitely be beneficial to a community in which education is lacking. This will cover some ground in terms of providing an alternate educational solution to students or individuals. In terms of money-making, this idea will least likely - in its initial phase - be a big or considerable money making venture, because (1) You will be spending a significant amount of money to fund and run it, (2) you will have to find a reliable and steady means of making money from the services you provide or from other provisions your research library will offer (i.e. Coffee stall) which will be somewhat difficult, (3) those students/individuals that make up your target audience (market) are likely to be unemployed or underpaid and therefore tight for money themselves and not a reliable source of potential income for your business, but borderline minimum at most. These are indeed challenges, and I have a sense that your not so much interested in the money making aspect, but more so in simply helping people, specifically those students in the community who are financially burdened, thus have lesser prospects in terms of getting the most out of the education (as they may or may not be able to afford text books) and who are likely out of work due to a variety of other factors. You seem adamant to go through with this, so I'll try provide some proactive criticisms.
If your going to have, strictly, a research library then you may want to consider that you will be competing, in essence, against other local libraries. Now it may not readily dawn upon you that you would even have competition in this field in terms of this field being at all a competitive one - but the reason why this is important is because you want individuals to come and use your facility, therefore it has to provide them with services, resources and tools that the local libraries already provide, otherwise they'll stick around the libraries that can and have already fully facilitated for their needs, and that they are already so familiar with. So your research library will have to have a reasonable level of technical adeptness, a satisfactory quality and number of resources, and a proper variety of administrative services, in order to draw a sufficient number of individuals, other than relying on individuals to come because it would be at first less crowded, or come out of casual curiosity, or some other indirect reason. By having an up-to-scratch library, you'll more likely keep your target audience, they will most likely refer you to their friends, and this is important because you don't want to buy so much equipment and invest so much capital into this and have little to no one using it.
What I feel would better transform this idea is if you were to not totally take this from the educational perspective, but rather take this from the social/cultural perspective. In other words, your goal of creating an education rich environment will not necessarily come by focusing on educational/technological aspects (as many other groups and institutions more professionally cater for this), but instead to drive a focus on the cultural and social environment around these students and individuals. You may want to integrate into your research library an idea of a lounge area or cafe', create a culture which will draw them to your facility and have it as a part of student campus life or community social life. It would be less recognizable as a research library, but individuals will identify it as a place to hang out, chill out, whilst getting work done and doing some job-seeking tasks. So to radically transform your idea of a research library, you may want to incorporate into your 'research library' elements of a 'casual lounge', 'cafe, coffee bar', 'light entertainment, short stage acts, movie/film screening', 'provide lectures, speeches, presentations, topical debates, talks, forums, have guest speakers', 'debating, trivia comps, design comps, academic-related challenges'. This will definitely keep your target audience hooked, as I am more so confident that they'll come based on the specific examples mentioned above than for that of which other libraries already provide. So this will single out your 'research library' to not actually be a research library but be a core for student life and utilities. That's if your thinking big and different, and it can possibly become a great money maker, if you franchise this model.
You can go down a different road and simplify your idea by not getting your own space but by making a proposition to a local library or to a campus library and run your operation from there as an extension of their services or as an extra/additional service of the institution (student run of course) - this way you can accomplish the fundamental tasks of your idea (such as providing textbooks and utilities for job seeking) without having to pay rent, and possibly avoid having to pay for all equipment and costs as the institution may give you a small grant or pay a certain percentage of it.
Or you could maybe start smaller by just providing services for older texts books at first, where you could act like a small library, or as a loans company, loaning older or newer textbooks like you would a DVD from a Blockbuster store (transforming your concept further), or if your having difficulty or hesitancy in getting office space, you can run the operations online such as have an online website acting as the sole interface, with an electronic catalog of the textbooks you have (which you can store them at home or on campus/library grounds) whereby individuals can search and request the textbooks and you can arrange a set pick up time, at a set place, doesn't have to be a public place, could just be in the car park and your car could act as delivery truck, lol. But basically these approaches focus on starting small and growing with demand whilst reserving your money till you can be more informed as to better spend it, because the risk of starting big is that you may fail to draw the sufficient numbers your looking for, therefore by starting small you can make more accurate projections as your business/'research library' grows. So you could start by only dealing with the whole text-book thing first, then expand to further areas as your number of customers/clients grow, and as demand increases.
So, overall, these are two tangents where you can take your 'research library' idea to: which is thinking big and transforming it into a social hub, or thinking small and simplifying it into a straight-forward, uncomplicated linear process of loaning textbooks.
That said, I think your idea needs a certain transformation as to make it, not just 'another' research library, strictly speaking, but something more, as with this student demographic it has the potential to become much more (i.e. like facebook). Otherwise if your intention is to strictly make a research library then definitely go ahead with it, taking into full consideration, as another person has mentioned, the pros and cons.
Hope this helps.
Pray as though everything depended on God. Work as though everything depended on you. ~ St Augustine
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