Some libraries are government-funded. Many are not. That ranges from the personal book collection numbering from one to many thousands in private hands, priva

Some libraries are government-funded. Many are not. That ranges from the personal book collection numbering from one to many thousands in private hands, private institutional libraries (the Mechanics Institute in San Francisco is one that comes to mind, many private universities and grammar schools have their own, as do numerous corporations, some of which are catalogued by Worldcat). Preservation of Western culture, notably the Greek and Roman canons, as well as much literature and knowledge of the Jewish, Byzantine, and Islamic worlds, occurred through religious institutions. Though in some regards those were the governments of the time. Indian, Chinese, and other further East Asian collections were preserved through multiple means. Book digitisation at US academic institutions (the University of Michigan being a major contributor to both Google Books and HathiTrust) has had its own exctremely combative relationship with commercial publishers, as has the US Library of Congress, which issues US copyright in the first place. Avoid slurs, it's an HN guideline: <https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html>.