That's how I interpreted the story. A load of
students go on a boat
and travel from port to port and while they're on the boat they study
various things. The boat is intended for students studying, so it's
natural that it would have a small library (8000 volumes sounds about
right).
PS
See
http://www.semesteratsea.org/our-ship/aboard-the-mv-explorer/learning-ameniā¦
That says it's a 9000 volume library. It also says the volumes are
specifically chosen with the curriculum of each voyage in mind, which
answers someone's point near the beginning of this thread about the
library possible not having any useful book for that paper.