[S]tudents quickly discover the gaps and blind spots in commercial services like YouTube when they attempt to study earlier periods in media history. Not only is most popular media poorly preserved, but even those materials that do turn up on the web are rarely given the context required for rigorous historical analysis.

from UVA Today, What Do Rita Moreno, ‘Shaft’ and an Eight-Track Player Have in Common?

This is why it’s important for libraries to have broad rights under the law to build, preserve, and make available broad collections of media. Despite our dreams (and many real achievements) about electronic access making everything available all the time, important culture falls through the cracks of market platforms like YouTube, Spotify, and Netflix.