I'll be taking the SE I and II in Illinois this October. I've been in direct contact with a representative for the IL Dept of Prof Regulation. Here is some of his replies regarding some of my questions:
Illinois does not allow 3 ring binders (unless it is published ONLY in that form by the publisher) and we do not allow any printouts from electronic media: Only the AASHTO manuals is available only in a 3 ring binder, and that will be the only exception. The PCE and ACI manuals must be published manuals, not printed from electronic media manuals.
The following is a link to the Reference Guide for Illinois for Structural:
http://www.idfpr.com/dpr/apply/FORMS/SE_SPEC_Exam.pdf
If you have the published AASHTO Manual and have broken it into multiple Binders, you must be prepared to defend that practice with the Proctors. I can not state that they will allow you to bring it in that way
I understand your frustration. However, as we do NOT use ELSES, our requirements are different in order to protect ourselves from breeches of the exam (which could cost this state in the millions of dollars).
I note that AASHTO has even taken the 3rd edition off their list of books that are currently available. However, until NCEES updates their exam questions, there is nothing that the States can do about the reference material.
Breeches of the exam?? We're the only state that has this stringent of rules, is it costing other states "millions of dollars"? Now, with that said I've been told by many other recent test takers that this isn't really enforced. They have seen people with IDOT manuals and many other things in 3-ring binders. My gripe to him was that our firm only purchases the electronic versions of the code. ACI, PCI, and others are all in pdf at our office. My plan was to print these out just for the exam, only to find out that binders aren't allowed. So they expect us to purchase manuals AGAIN in hard copy format just to take this exam, which is BS. I also broke the AASHTO manual out into 4 binders, to separate some of the larger chapters and decrease the massive size of the manual.
I agree with others that all of these references are available to an engineer in day-to-day life. If you have a small hiccup, pull out a design guide to get you back on track. A good engineer doesn't know everything, a good engineer knows where to find it!
As far as taking it outside the state, I believe reciprocity may be a problem with the SE licenses out of state. With IL's stringent rules, they may not allow you to transfer the license to Illinois (unless you are from Cali or Washington). I don't know this for sure though.