One problem I see with annas archive is that there is a tendency towards older books. Now I do understand this for many reasons, but ... I recently read a book about steel construction in 1932, just for curiousity. I wanted to find a more recent one - did not even have to be, say, 1990 or 2000 or some such, but I simply could not find any (well, perhaps english speaking, but this is also a problem in that non-english languages are VERY underpresented in general).

I hope they can fix this in the long run. We need to preserve digital information on a much broader basis.

> I hope they can fix this in the long run.

There's nothing AA could "fix" here, this depends entirely on volunteers uploading the books. Your best way to help is to buy the books yourself, use a book scanning service (eg. 1dollarscan), and upload it to ZLib/LibGen.

You can also make a book request on ZLib, that way someone else will be able to do that for you if they want to

I found this on open library from 1989, if useful: https://openlibrary.org/works/OL5859479W/Steel_construction?...

With a few other options in search:

https://openlibrary.org/search?q=%22steel+construction%22&mo...

In my experience, the availability of anything that isn’t popular or computer nerd-adjacent from before the age of ebooks is very hit and miss on AA.

Recent publications have not yet passed the test of time.