Why are there so few archives of non-rare, non-specialist books, films, TV? A “someone else is doing it” problem? Well, one person is.
A prudent society keeps at least one specimen of all it makes, forever. It still amazes me that after 20 years the only publicly available back up of the internet is the privately funded Internet Archive. The only broad archive of television and radio broadcasts is the same organization. They are now backing up the backups of books. Someday we’ll realize the precocious wisdom of it all and Brewster Kahle will be seen as a hero.