Comment by gumboshoes

"Almost across the board" is a damning statement, not a remark that supports careless deaccessioning. I work in the margins of my field, and literally thousands of books are unavailable to me through interlibrary loan. I have to buy them or fly to libraries around the world, at a cost of many thousands of dollars I do not have. (One of my colleagues was fortunate to get a large inheritance; they almost exclusively use it to acquire or travel to books they need for their subject.) And mine is not even an esoteric field, nor esoteric subject. It's just that too many books were deaccessioned on the baseless idea that someone else would surely have the book and make it available to scholars.