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.
The nice buildings provide a public space sheltered from the elements to millions of people a year. I love the IA but it really isn't a worthy comparison.
Seattle public library is also an archive as well as a provider of many beautiful and free third spaces. The downtown library is very cool. I bet there’s stuff in the stacks there that is not digitized anywhere.