alt Hacker NewsI don't think it's really fair to compare IA to a real library. The Seattle public library for example spends 76% of their operating budget on employees, most of who are doing public services work. The second major expense for a real library is paying for books and materials, again IA doesn't do any of that.
It's not fair to compare an institution with a website.
They’re both institutions but one wants recognition and nice buildings the other wants to be an immutable archive unlike Wikipædia which curates and memory holes issues that don’t align with its thinking. The other one just marches on without flashy managers at the helm making life easy for themselves.