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!

▲

Tangurena2 5 minutes ago | parent | next [-]

Whenever I am attending university, or live near one, I try to walk every aisle and every shelf at least once per year. Maybe things are much better these days, but all too often I would find books that were not in the card catalog (or cataloged incorrectly). The "adjacent shelf" method of research was one secret that grad students tended to learn.

▲

Cycl0ps an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-]

You're browsing for whatever piques your interest, and the library wants to curate the collection based on what people are interested in. The books that collect interest get placed on the shelves and the ones that don't get archived. If it's in the archive it probably wouldn't have interested you.

▲

elictronic 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Expecting libraries to maintain digital scans of every book they have had or anything to that effect is a little laughable. These organizations do more for communities with less money and you expect them do now navigate the legal and ethical quagmire of digital ownership because you can't handle knowledge and books becoming less valuable with time.

If you are a software dev, go volunteer at a library and offer up your time to do this. Do something for your community, do something for yourself.

	▲	bigbadfeline an hour ago \| parent [-]
		> If you are a software dev, go volunteer at a library and offer up your time to do this. You misunderstand the environment, "offering" doesn't work if the library haven't asked for help, in that case you're just ignored. You see, whatever you do for them would require participation and at least some effort on their side. Some other organization could help here, but going to the library and begging them to let you help them is a non starter.