Just went to a library ran by a local outdoor organization. Just tons of history books, guidebooks, videos. And you can just borrow them. Do your research. Enjoy them. It's amazing.
Fuck the person who has kept one rare book I wanted to check out for the last 12 years tho.
How rare are we talking? I once had an Interlibrary Loan request come through on a book that had only ever had 300 printed copies so it might not be completely beyond your reach.
Hmm doubt it's that rare though not in print anymore. I actually have the 1st edition but wanted to check out the 2nd.
Try worldcat.org if you haven't already, maybe a nearby university has a copy.
"Out of print" is one of my least favorite things about intellectual property law in this country. (Other than, y'know, the entirety of it as a concept.) It's the artistic equivalent of throwing away food and locking the dumpster.
Lucky for me I believe the whole book is available online in high quality scans. Just wanted to like hold it and flip through it because I'm a old-school weirdo haha. Definitely a situation of it being "not economically viable" to print. Like the author allowed the scans happily but not enough people wanna buy it to print it since the 90s.