I worked in an academic library that rebound pretty much every book they acquired. One of the biggest in the world, too.

My wife worked for a company that specialized in rebinding paperbacks for schools and libraries. It makes more economic sense to do that for niche use cases rather than make all print runs more expensive.

Nowadays, academic libraries are moving their books to archival storage. New publications are electronic only. You need to be a formal member of the university community to access it, unlike in times past when any member of the public could stroll the aisles of physical books and journals.