5,000 volumes, annual acquisitions are minimal. The task of systematically expanding an existing stock of rare books is an extremely demanding one for the librarian, even leaving aside the question of high prices. Unlike a private collector, a library cannot set out to achieve a complete collection on one limited subject. Its efforts are better directed towards assembling the important milestones along the path of development in the natural sciences and technology down the centuries. Not every old book is automatically antiquarian.
Most books just get old and are no more than waste paper.
Only a few acquire eternal life, having fulfilled their original purpose at the time. These are works which speak for their time, which have shown the way forward and still have something to say to us today. This can be true of books which are only a few decades old. A collection of old books is not a graveyard If the library simply preserved its old and rare books for posterity, it would not be doing its job properly. The object of this part of library work is to arouse the interest of both the academic and the general public.