The licensing that libraries are forced to use in order to support lending digital books only allows them to "loan" the digital book a certain number of times.

The licensing that libraries are forced to use in order to support lending digital books only allows them to "loan" the digital book a certain number of times. Depending on publisher, it could be 50-200 loans and then the license goes poof - time to buy a new copy of the digital book to lend out. Yes, paper books can get destroyed. I remember spilling gravy all over one library book. That was an expensive book to replace. Plus I ruined all that gravy. > Does the Internet Archive store redundant copies in many locations? Does it use long-term physical formats? I'm sure they do. Personally, I'd really like to know what some "best practices" there are in doing this. Other than the digital preservation group at the Library of Congress, I'm a newbie at some of this. And no one else has thought about it. https://www.loc.gov/preservation/digital/index.html https://www.loc.gov/preservation/digital/index.html The state agency I work for has to keep records forever. And they have to be readable forever. You can't have the statutes become unreadable because digital files get bit rot, or folks decide that they don't want to support older versions.