I wish that the Internet Archive had tried to work around this by reaching out to public libraries, and having those public libraries agree to "loan" their stil

I wish that the Internet Archive had tried to work around this by reaching out to public libraries, and having those public libraries agree to "loan" their still-on-the-shelf books to the Internet Archive. That might not cover all the copies that were simultaneously checked out by people (I don't know the numbers involved), but it would have helped.