Library use tends to be very sensitive to distance. Computers can be left unattended, but Paper Libraries have to be staffed whenever open. As a result, most Paper Libraries are, in fact, closed most of the time. A paper document can ordinarily be used by only one person at a time. However, the demand for documents is highly skewed.
Some titles are more popular than others, so there is competition for the use of documents.
In university libraries, studies have repeatedly shown that about six times out of ten a desired document is not found, usually because it has been borrowed. Because of the distance to the collections and, in a large library, the separation of the documents from the catalog, use of the Paper Library can be time-consuming. Paper Libraries have problems of scale. The larger the collection of documents, the longer it takes to identify and find one. The universe of Paper Libraries is characterized by extreme geographic inequality.