Sender: Rare book and manuscripts <EXLIBRIS-L@LISTSERV.INDIANA.EDU>
Notwithstanding some comments to the contrary, there is in fact is nothing immoral, evil or even improper about destroying books; it's a necessary fact of life. Each year literally billions of books are manufactured. One website estimated the number of books "sold" (just sold!) in 1999 in the United States alone at 1.1 billion. See http://www2.sims.berkeley.edu/research/projects/how-much-info/print.html#origstockworld. If one includes journals, magazines, newspapers, and all other sorts of printed materials, the total is truly astronomical. Where are all these supposed to go? Are the few households that actually have a book "collection" supposed to take in, each year, tens of thousands of unwanted printed items to save them for posterity? Remember, this includes not only "great" works of literature, but also thousands of copies of bestsellers and not-so-bestsellers, obsolete textbooks, nurse novels, Readers Digest Condensed Books (are these still published?),
cookbooks, business success manuals (oy!), devotional gift books (double oy!), diet books, corporate retreat materials, technical manuals, and god knows what else, not to mention the "bound report from the Fourth Pan-American Conference held in Buenos Aires in 1910" (Damn! I was looking for that.) Obviously, all these books cannot -- and should not -- be preserved forever. If books were not regulary destroyed, and in great quantity, we would quickly become overwhelmed with them, have no place to live, and would have to leave all our homes to store our collections of books. (And booksellers would have to pay endless rent to house unsaleable materials.) It is manifestly our sacred duty to destroy books, so that mankind may have room to live. Besides, if most books were not destroyed, we wouldn't have many "rare" books, would we?
Larry
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