Eureka!
I got it!! Thread pools!
Here's something you don't see every day, but I sincerely hope will become common in the next couple of years: Books On Demand, both a principle and the name of a company (well, it's called On Demand Books, actually... I tried) that manufactures automatic printing press/bindaries. Their first model, called the Espresso Book Machine, costs $50kus, but can print, cut, trim, bind, and fit into a laminated cover two books simultaneously inside of seven wallclock minutes, or 15-20 library quality books per hour. There are two in public right now, one at the World Bank Infoshop in my home town of Washington, DC, and one at the public Library of Alexandria, Egypt (make what jokes you will). The cost of a single paperback book is about $0.01us per page. They are at this time working on setting up a digital library of texts that can be freely printed and purchased by anyone who uses an Espresso Book Machine in just about any format and with respect to copyright laws. They don't say, however, if you can walk up and print a file on some storage medium you happen to have with you, though...
I'm going to track down the World Bank Infoshop and see what it's all about.