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It's impossible to collect all books even if there's a law concerning this.
In universities in Germany at the beginning of this century, the very first books that got a digital reproduction and a scientific restauration where cheap pulp novels that where printed about 100 years ago.
These novels where printed on cheap paper and would have been lost forever, since the average reader of these novel does not archive them and university libraries didn't collect them. But as we know now, these novels are important to understand the daily life and the desires of the masses from a century ago, even the ads in these novel are an importaint factor to understand what happened 100 years ago.
This was a weird situation: Thomas Mann and Goethe had to wait, but Groschen-Romane got a full restauration. That was a bit difficult to explain to the public. Pulp novels usually have no advocate, expecially if we're talking about pulp novels for specific social groups (soldiers, maids, venders, for exeample).
What I'm trying to say is: Quality doesn't always matter (And quantity doesn't matter too, of course).
Maybe Melville's poetry is an importaint factor to understand some passages of his novels. I don't know, I haven't read a lot of Melville so far. Maybe Melville tied some stuff with his poems that he wouldn't try in his novels or in his letters.
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