alt Hacker NewsThat 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.
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> 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.
Yale, Columbia, Harvard, Princeton, and NYPL coordinate on exactly this https://recap.princeton.edu/
> 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.
This is actually a mostly-solved problem in many cases. Many librarians have great SQL skills (or at least the ones I've met) and can query this easily. Most regional library systems have a centralized catalog. And the cost of moving books on demand is fixed: a van with one book and a van with fifty books costs the same to drive between branches.
Most colleges and universities have agreements with each other for exactly these systems and they're actively used. My partner considered completing his U Chicago PhD from San Francisco by way of the Stanford library.