My first thought is how accessible these books are. If a book hasn't been checked out in years, and there's another library in the interlibrary loan network that has a copy, there's no practical reason to keep another copy. If you can request a book and have it arrive in a few days, that's not an issue in any real sense, especially for books that nobody is checking out in the first place.

I used to work in a library, and this was often the case. Our basement was stuffed to the gills with romance novels that nobody was reading anymore, mysteries published decades ago, and kids books that probably related to kids from a previous generation more. A yearly sale would see the collection trimmed. Almost across the board, you could still get those books through interlibrary loan. If not from the county network, from another library in the state. In my time, I never heard of anyone missing a book that had been disposed of.

40 years ago, my public middle school would periodically pick books that weren't checked out for a couple decades. They'd rubberstamp "discard" over the library's ownership mark and put them in a pile that said "free books" with the implicit declaration that those books were headed for the landfill.

I ended up with a nice selection of books on nuclear energy and radioactivity including a nice non-fiction Asimov book on the neutrino and particle physics.

Libraries are always filled to the rafters. The only way to fit new books in is to take old books out. If they didn't, they would only ever have books from the 1940s when they first built that library.

A big problem with accessibility is that interlibrary loan is awful for browsing.

I rarely go to a library to loan a specific work - I go there to find a work. This means going through dozens of potentially-relevant titles, taking them off the shelf, quickly browsing through them, and taking the one or two best ones home. This entire workflow becomes impossible if the book isn't readily available.

A book hidden in a box in the basement, or which arrives after only a few days, might as well not exist at all. I'm simply not going to scroll through a list, order several dozen books solely by their title alone, and come back a few days later (if this is even allowed at all): it's just not worth my time.

The whole "we keep a copy in a central archive" approach only works for historical purposes, not for actually making it available for reading. If you do that you have to also make digital scans trivially available for browsing - and in practice that rarely happens!

Our basement was stuffed to the gills with romance novels that nobody was reading anymore, mysteries published decades ago, and kids books that probably related to kids from a previous generation more.

This is hardly comparable to difficult philosophy books as mentioned in the article, though. To my mind, the poin of libraries is to house and make accessible difficult or challenging books that might not necessarily be popular. I was shocked when I first visited an American library and found large numbers of mass-market paperbacks and magazines. When I say 'large numbers' I mean 10 or 20 copies of books by Oprah or other celebrity authors. Librarians would have it that they're serving the community by making these books available in the library around the same time they're available in bookstores, ignoring the fact that once the publisher's marketing drive is over all those extra copies are going to be surplus. I do not understand why you would buy 20 copies of one book when you could have it and 19 other books.

That only works if all the libraries coordinate to determine which one will hold the last copy, and if the expense of moving such books around on request does not exceed that of storage.

Given the number of books I've been unable to find when I wanted them save in the Library of Congress (which won't loan, necessitating a trip to DC, or finding and purchasing my own copy), and the number of times my ILL requests have been turned down, a last copy per system mechanism seems the best for preserving access.

I fear that the availability of e-books will lead to more libraries getting rid of their last copy, not just the penultimate one.

and there's another library in the interlibrary loan network that has a copy, there's no practical reason to keep another copy. If you can request a book and have it arrive in a few days

I've done ILL in three major cities. The shortest time it took to get the books requested was 14 days. Some have taken over 60.

The Internet Archive accepts media they do not have on hand yet.

Resources:

https://archive.org/want/?mode=donation_book

https://help.archive.org/help/does-the-internet-archive-have...

https://help.archive.org/help/donate-books-app-for-ios-and-a...

https://help.archive.org/help/how-do-i-make-a-physical-donat...

this sounds a bit different than a university library situation

I was walking down the street, and I saw a art/documentary style picture of a book seller, wearing a Fez, it seemed interesting, so I took a picture of it, and later fawned on it... until I realized that his books were on display, so I rotated the picture, and scanned the titles. There were three Greek tarot decks, which were interesting, and a book, that was about an old technology. I went to the library to see where I could check it out. No were in the city library, no where in the State University or State colleges, no where in the county collection... and then the librarian/Super-genius, suggested scanning the local library database, and found the book, in a small library, in the far corner of the state, and I filled out a form to request a two week loan... but two days to get here, and two days return, I would have the book for 10 solid days.

When I got it, I read through it, solid for three days. Wow. Stunning look at a technology in its infancy.

The name of the Bookseller was Luma Kunda. Thank you Mr Kunda. I later learned from someone at the nearby bus stop, that Mr Kunda possessed an eidetic memory.

I would have loved to hear him tell stories about what he saw in the tarot cards.

And if you're lucky, your library may do frequent book sales!

https://www.bapl.org/book-sales/

>My first thought is how accessible these books are. If a book hasn't been checked out in years, and there's another library in the interlibrary loan network that has a copy, there's no practical reason to keep another copy.

These libraries do not coordinate the deaccessioning. If it ever gets down to 2 copies, there's a non-zero chance that they will deaccession their copies simultaneously, and then there are none.

You worked for a library. Did they ever check first to make sure some other library had a copy? Did they warn that other library "we're getting rid of ours, please don't get rid of yours"?