I and many other librarians have private 'pirate' libraries of various materials, particularly ephemera that aren't covered by mandatory deposit or digital content. We're just not allowed to distribute them.
Do we abuse this? Oh hell yes - most of us are archiving according to our personal interests. Which is the main concern about the IA going offline: We shouldn't need to rely on some of us personally saving things (and we can confirm each other's provenance - in order to trust my archive is what I say it is, you need to trust me).
I and many other librarians have private 'pirate' libraries of various materials, particularly ephemera that aren't covered by mandatory deposit or digital content. We're just not allowed to distribute them.
Do we abuse this? Oh hell yes - most of us are archiving according to our personal interests. Which is the main concern about the IA going offline: We shouldn't need to rely on some of us personally saving things (and we can confirm each other's provenance - in order to trust my archive is what I say it is, you need to trust me).