Last copy depository RE: [Publib] re: donating discard books

[Karen Schneider]

> My sense is that more recent initiatives like electronic journal subscriptions, digitization and programs such as google books would make last copy depositories a very hard program to sell at the local level, at least as far as public libraries go.  This would be an interesting question to pose for academic library systems and consortia and special library networks (medical libraries come to mind.)
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You know, I think Kevin's question is quite a good one (I have
interests in this issue for a section of literature not generally
represented in public libraries -- literary journals). It is
absolutely true that this would not sell well at the local level. But
at the regional/national/global level, copy plans are actually
happening in academia, as low-use just-in-case materials are
increasingly centralized in mass storage facilities. This is in part
because the threshold of survival for print materials is much higher
than you might think is necessary.

You might think, well, I can find it on abe books or I see a couple
copies in Worldcat, so everything's cool. Preservation specialists
will tell you that if you don't intentionally preserve something,
there's no guarantee it will be around. To paraphrase a statement by
the Metaarchive preservation project, the assumption that cultural
heritage institutions have taken steps to preserve popular reading is
the greatest threat to their long-term survival.

Karen / PUBLIB