"Moldy old books" THAT ARE PUBLIC DOCUMENTS, CREATED WITH PUBLIC FUNDS BY PUBLIC OFFICIALS AND STORED IN PUBLIC BUILDINGS do not "generally get thrown away or burned". (Fascist and communist states excepted.) They get restored, preserved, indexed, and hopefully digitized.

I mean, if only there were some national umbrella group of archives that had entire departments of people devoted to techniques for preventing and restoring damaged materials, who published their findings on paper and online for free, who hold regular disaster planning and archives management conferences, who promote best practices, who are extremely active on social media and could have helped if only the state had bothered to ask them about the mold situation OH WAIT THERE IS http://www.archives.gov/preservation/emergency-prep/disaster...

. . .

(All that being said, I do agree that the key factor in this travesty was probably ignorance rather than malice, as it is in so many situations. But given the state's history and the unusualness of this act, the blogger's skepticism is definitely warranted. And just to reiterate, the Heritage Society was willing to take the records in for free. They were the initial volunteers cleaning out that yucky basement, too. I don't think even the state is trying to play the "expensive" card.)