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I'm an undergraduate but I find even the titles of the topics in LNCS very unfamiliar as if I have no idea about computer science, I'm wondering if these lecture notes have more info that is not found in textbooks? In other words, is reading text books enough, do textbooks contain the same info but presenting the complete picture? I think a comparison between textbooks vs research papers would answer my questions.

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As the Wikipedia article says, those books tend to cover the proceedings of specialized conferences. They are not meant to be read as lecture notes stemming from an early undergraduate course. – jonsca Dec 15 '11 at 12:02

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Keep in mind that by "Lecture Notes in Computer Science", they mean lectures presented at research conferences about new and developing research. They are expressly not notes from class lectures, but rather papers from fairly high level research conferences.

As such, I would expect the "audience" of such papers to be primarily graduate students and higher, with the addition of upper level undergraduates with a particular flair for research. But even then, the content should be challenging, as the content of any research journal should be.

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but concerning the knowledge presented in them, will it be found in textbooks later or the only place to find is these notes? – Amir Nasr Dec 15 '11 at 14:01
@AmirNasr It's only likely to be found in a textbook later if the researcher ends up writing a textbook on that subject - an unlikely event in many, if not most, cases. Additionally, the subject matter presented in such a textbook would probably be of the same difficulty as the original paper - intended for graduate students and above. – EpiGrad Dec 15 '11 at 14:45
but a textbook would cover the subject from the beginning so the information would be clear and not hidden in some notes. didn't the popular algorithms or concepts begin in research papers then published in books? – Amir Nasr Dec 15 '11 at 16:43
@AmirNasr A textbook need not cover the subject "from the beginning". I have any number of textbooks sitting on my shelf that are not treatments of a subject from the introduction. You may not have run across them as an undergraduate, but if you continue, you will. And while many popular concepts begin in research papers and are then published in textbooks, massive amounts of research in a field is never contained within a textbook. Advanced research is the domain of journals like LNCS and conferences. You may not see a concept make textbooks for years - if it ever does. – EpiGrad Dec 15 '11 at 16:54

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