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Comment by WillAdams | Hacker News Reader

"Whoever destroys a book destroys a link in the chain of human knowledge"

-- Thos. Jefferson

Public libraries destroy unsold book donations all the time. I often tried to give away some old books I have online and nobody wants them. Some of these books have some nostalgic value to me so I hate to see them just get destroyed so they just lie in my shed.

I have a copy of Michael Abrash's Graphics Programming Black Book (it's like 1k+ pages) with DESTROY written in red on the sides. I appreciate that someone saved it and sold it to me for cheap :)

I have one of those I got second hand also. :)

That's an example of a "very much NOT rare" book, as you can easily find dozens of sources of scans online.

I wanted a physical copy, good ones are a few hundred bucks.

Which is something I argue against constantly (and at least my local library tries hard not to) --- discarded books are placed on tables near the children's area usually and folks are free to pick them up (it might be that a few of them are sold, I certainly get a lot of ex-library books when buying on Thriftbooks and Better World Books).

A partial solution there is of course a larger budget and a "last copy" policy where the last copy of a text at least is stored away in deep storage against a future loan.

The local libraries also accept book donations for an annual fund-raising sale.

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