This is even truer for digital information going back five years. Moreover, when publishers are the sole source for archival copies of their works, replacing the political, social, and cultural mission of many libraries and archives, there is a greater risk of selective archiving. Just as in the paper world, not every library needs to have a preservation copy of a given work. However, research institutions throughout the country should have preservation copies. The judgement of what to preserve or not to preserve should not be solely in the hands of the publishers.
Online publishers have a very poor record of preserving copyrighted works.
Producers of commercial online information resources rely on market demand to determine the content of their products. With no financial incentive to archiving older materials, low demand often results in titles being dropped from an online resource without warning. Law libraries have experienced this situation when a major database producer dropped without notice the French legal database from its collection. Even if a library had the right to archive the material and had notice that the material was to be deleted from the database, the information could have been preserved by a library or a consortium. Unlike in the print world, because there may be no secondary market for electronic works, libraries, and educational institutions may be unable to acquire works that they were initially unable to acquire.