A leading second-hand book dealer in Aotearoa is expressing shock and dismay over the National Library of New Zealand’s plan to destroy approximately half a million books, calling the move a “disgrace” and a threat to cultural preservation.
Warwick Jordan, owner of Hard To Find Books and a long-time advocate for saving out-of-circulation titles, said he felt physically ill after learning the National Library had begun shredding and recycling the books through a commercial service.
“I couldn’t sleep last night,” Jordan said. “I know what kind of books these guys are destroying. Two-thirds of them I could use.”
The books in question are primarily international non-fiction titles spanning subjects such as bibliography, religion, philosophy, and computer science. According to Jordan, many of the volumes may be rare or even unique. One example he cited was a two-volume bibliography of UFO literature from the 1950s, which he believes could fetch $300 to $500 on the second-hand market.
A Long-Running Controversy
The dispute over book disposals dates back decades. Jordan recalled that in the late 1990s, the National Library attempted a similar mass offload, offering batches of books via tender. He won two such tenders, securing around 30,000 books. However, the broader project was shelved after political pushback.
The issue resurfaced in 2018, when only 5,000 out of 45,000 books offered at a Lions Club charity sale were sold. Jordan, who criticized the sale approach as misguided, received the unsold remainder but believes the average reader was never the right audience for these niche materials.
Since then, he has repeatedly offered to take the remaining books—at his own cost and effort—including paying for packing and delivery. Although his financial capacity has changed, he said he is still prepared to find a way to save the collection.
“If I wanted to make money, I’d sell something else. I want to save the books,” he said. “There could be books in there that are the only copy in the world.”
National Library Defends Decision
Mark Crookston, Director of Content Services at the National Library, defended the plan, saying the library had exhausted efforts to re-home the books. Since 2018, they had successfully relocated about 100,000 items, but no viable options emerged for the remaining 500,000.
“We explored several options, including sales,” Crookston said in an interview with RNZ’s Afternoons. “But disposal rules for public assets require auction or a tender process—both of which are time-consuming and costly.”
He added that additional expenses related to preparing the books for redistribution, such as removing sleeves and stamping items as “withdrawn,” made the operation impractical.
“To do that properly, we’d have to divert existing staff or hire more people. It would cost hundreds of thousands of dollars,” Crookston said.
Disputed Logic
Jordan contested the reasoning, arguing that the commercial service tasked with disposal would still need to process the books—at a potentially higher cost.
“We could do that for them,” he said. “There’s no logic in paying someone to destroy what we could handle ourselves.”
But Crookston insisted the National Library’s decision aligns with standard collection management principles followed by libraries around the world.
“Large-scale book disposals always attract strong reactions,” he said. “But for us, the most cost-efficient and responsible course of action is to destroy these books.”
Cultural Impact Concerns
Critics like Jordan fear the mass disposal reflects a deeper devaluation of printed knowledge and cultural heritage.
“Bookstores, libraries, and archives are not just storage spaces—they’re cultural memory,” he said. “Once these books are gone, they’re gone forever.”
As public reaction to the plan continues to grow, the debate over how best to preserve access to knowledge in the digital age remains unresolved.
