General iTunes-iPod question (double-deleting?)

I deleted many albums from my iTunes in order to save space on my computer. As a result, those albums disappeared from my iPod. However, when I did this before, the songs were intact on my iPod.
Has it always been that when you delete a song from your iTunes library, it disappears from your iPod itself? It seems unreasonable to burden your computer with thousands of songs.
Thanks!

You can delete songs from your iTunes/computer hard drive after transferring them to the iPod, and for this you need to set your iPod to manage the iPod content manually.
However, storing music on your iPod and nowhere else is an extremely risky option because when (and not if) there comes a time to restore your iPod, which is a very common fix for iPod problems, then all the music would be erased. If you no longer have the music in iTunes (or any other back up), then all that music would be lost.
At the very least back up your music to either cd or dvd before deleting it, particularly any purchased music/videos, as this would have to be bought again if it were lost. See this about backing up media.
How to back up your media in iTunes.

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