The library that survived by lending nothing
For 500 years, the Bodleian made even kings read on-site. Stubbornness turned out to be a preservation strategy.
In 1645, King Charles I asked to borrow a book from Oxford's Bodleian Library. The librarian refused. The king — mid–civil war, still nominally sovereign — accepted the refusal.
Thomas Bodley had re-founded the library in 1602 with a rule that admitted no exceptions: books do not leave. No loans, no matter the rank of the borrower. Oliver Cromwell was later refused too, completing a rare bipartisan achievement.
The rule looks like institutional stubbornness. It was actually a survival algorithm. Lending libraries of the era bled their collections out one unreturned volume at a time. The Bodleian's refusal to lend is a large part of why its early collection still exists.
Sometimes the most generous thing an institution can do with what it holds is to be ungenerous about where it goes.