>If a man-made object is degraded to the point where it's garbage, why not? Sure, some of these tomes may have been recoverable Or hasn't been checked out in y

>If a man-made object is degraded to the point where it's garbage, why not? Sure, some of these tomes may have been recoverable Or hasn't been checked out in years, or is grossly outdated then why waste physical space to preserve it. Sure, some patrons might find novelty in there being a book that mentions all 48 states of the U.S. bbbbuutttt there's 50 now. Or 'hey we've got 12 copies of The Da Vinci Code, no one has checked it out in 3 months... perhaps we should get rid of 11 of them'. In a private collection, sure. In a library, ehhhhh a public library's mission isn't to preserve a given work in perpetuity. Also in my experience libraries will attempt to sell the books first at fairly regular sales (I used to horde allowance and paper route money to go buy tons of science fiction and fantasy paperbacks when I was a kid for 10-50 cents a pop, it's how I discovered Stephen R. Donaldson and the Thomas Covenant books, I thought the paperback cover of Lord Foul's Bane looked evil and creepy. How I discovered Heinlein too) then only throw away what is truly damaged or didn't sell to make space for newer texts.