The materials that don't quite make their way into the OPAC ought to be compiled into unofficial lists and made available over the Internet. To make adequate use of the World Wide Web, however, we need to go beyond the level of indexes to full text. The Web was meant for text, hypertext, images, sounds, and eventually touch and smell. Second, electronic archival copies of unique documents will exist in the event that the original is lost or destroyed. There are problems with this approach, of course.
Unique materials are no longer unique and possibly less valuable if copies exist.
To some extent the presenting library is relinquishing ownership of the documents, but this may be less of a problem than it appears. If a library permits the photocopying of its documents, the cat is basically already out of the bag. In any case, what appears on the Web is a virtual document, and the original remains in the hands of the holding library. Web publishing is a game that anyone can play. This is to say that a library with a huge volume count is probably no better positioned on the electronic landscape than a small community college library.