Library items that remember their X/Y Position inside InDesign

I always thought that the disadvantage of using a Library inside Adobe InDesign was the fact that you had to place the items where you wanted manually. I thought this was the case until last week when a student in a class pointed out that if you select a library item and choose "place item(s)" from the panel menu it will be placed at it's original X/Y position on the current spread. Previously, the only way to do this was with snippets, but now we have another.