Dear Dr. Ehrman,

Can we name places where these copying activities were going on? 

Egypt: Library of Alexandria?

Israel: Yavne for post-Revolt center of learning and preservation for Israel?

Better yet, see this: ** you do not have permission to see this link **

Royal Library of Antioch (221 B.C.)

Library of Pergamum (197 B.C. – 159 B.C.) (Modern Bergama)
The Attalid kings formed the second best Hellenistic library after Alexandria, founded in emulation of the Ptolemies. When the Ptolemies stopped exporting papyrus, partly because of competitors and partly because of shortages, the Pergamenes invented a new substance to use in codices, called parchment

Asia Minor: Library of Celsus (135 A.D.) (Located within the city of Ephesus)
This library was part of the triumvirate of libraries in the Mediterranean which included the aforementioned Library of Pergamum and the great Library of Alexandria.

The Library of Hadrian (100 AD)

The Library of Rhodes (100 AD)

The Theological Library of Caesarea Maritima, a late 3rd century AD establishment located in present-day Israel, was a great early Christian library. Through Origen of Alexandria and the scholarly priest Pamphilus of Caesarea, the school won a reputation for having the most extensive ecclesiastical library of the time, containing more than 30,000 manuscripts: Gregory of Nazianzus, Basil the Great, Jerome and others came to study there.

Rome: Libraries of the Forum, consisted of separate libraries founded in the time of Augustus near the Roman Forum that contained both Greek and Latin texts, separately housed, as was the conventional practice. There were libraries in the Porticus Octaviae near the Theatre of Marcellus, in the temple of Apollo Palatinus, and in the Bibliotheca Ulpia in the Forum of Trajan.

Atrium Liberatatis public library of Asinius Pollio

The Villa of the Papyri, in Herculaneum, Italy
The only library known to have survived from classical antiquity. This villa’s large private collection may have once belonged to Julius Caesar’s father-in-law, Lucius Calpurnius Piso Caesoninus in the 1st century BC. Buried by the eruption of Mount Vesuvius that destroyed the town in 79 AD, it was rediscovered in 1752, around 1800 carbonized scrolls were found in the villa’s top story. Using modern techniques such as multi-spectral imaging, previously illegible or invisible sections on scrolls that have been unrolled are now being deciphered. It is possible that more scrolls remain to be found in the lower, unexcavated levels of the villa. Professor, any New Testament work here??????

Would some of the scribes have been employees of the above institutions? Wouldn’t the Library of Alexandria know its reputation and not let quality slip?

I would think given the primacy of the Church of Rome, perhaps the Libraries of the Forum contained the works of Josephus and New Testament scrolls. If members of the college which kept the Sybilline Oracles needed to consult them for the Roman Senate, they would go to the Libraries of the Forum?