I also will miss GOTOW. However to get detailed info on specific firearms I have found that it is surprising how many
Books have been printed on specific firearms. I use interlibrary loan as it is too expensive to buy all he books out there.
As a recent example I became interested in Civil War Gwyn & Campbell carbines. There was a dedicated book to these
And my local library received one on loan from the Air Force Academy library at no cost to me.
Maybe someone will pick up GOTOW - it was always useful for product reviews and vendor information.
Thanks for bringing up another trend I have noticed.
Used to be that I, too, used inter-library loans to get those more obscure resources. In doing this three trends were revealed.
The first trend is that increasingly Educational Institutions would not lend to Public Libraries. While this still happens, what I found is
that Educational Institutions tend to loan more to other EI.
A second trend is that Public Libraries are increasingly culling-out older titles or designating one library out of a particular district to hold older titles moreso than others. When I was young, our Public Library was filled to the gills with titles going on for shelf after shelf. Modern libraries seem to have only a fraction of the titles, and those only going back just so far.
Yet a third trend that I have found is that many of the better Institutional Libraries have started requiring subscription in order to use the library. While a person might gain access to the general University library, specific departments often require a "student ID" or subscription.
Some time back you will recall that I made a fine older pamphlet available to others on request. This was my way of pushing back on these unsettling patterns.
Best Wishes,
Bruce