Dealer sickened by plan to destroy half a million books
The country's largest second-hand book business wants to save half a million books from being disposed of by the National Library of New Zealand.
The National Library claims they've been trying to re-home them since 2018, that there's no demand, and that most haven't been requested in decades. They say the process of shredding and recycling them, via a commercial service, has started.
Book dealer and Hard To Find Books owner Warwick Jordan says he couldn't sleep last night and felt physically sick. His various offers over the years to take all the books himself haven't been accepted.
'To give you some context, this issue actually goes back to the 1990s. In the late 1990s, the National Library wanted to get rid of about this number of books. Initially, what they did was they started putting them up in small groups in tender. They put two tenders out. I won both of them, a total of about 30,000 books.'
The process of dealing with the remainder was stalled when the issue became political, he says, until 2018 when only 5000 out of 45,000 were sold via a Lions Club book sale.
Jordan labelled the book sale idea as 'dumb' because the books - although valuable to him - wouldn't be of interest to the average person. The library ended up giving him the leftover from the sale.
'I know what kind of books these guys are destroying. I know that two thirds of them I can use. There's about one third that really is just junk. I mean, it's just no one wants it. It's just out of date.'
The books are international, mostly non-fiction and cover a range of topics like were bibliography, religion, philosophy and computer science.
Jordan says one example of a book that was going to junk was a two-volume set bibliography of UFO books from the 1950s. He believes it could retail for $300-$500.
'I'm not saying they're all worth that kind of money. But there's a lot of interesting and unusual things that wouldn't sell to the average Joe public. But there are people out there who are interested, specialised interest.'
Jordan says he continued to make offers for the remainder, including packing, delivery, and paying money for them.
Although now he longer can afford to make the same financial offer as he did back then, he's willing to find a way to make it work.
'I mean, if I want to make money, I'd go and sell something that actually sells. I want to save the books. It's a disgrace. There could be books in there that is the only copy in the world. Who knows?'
National Library director of content services Mark Crookston told Afternoons they had undertaken a range of considerations before reaching this decision.
'We've found homes for about 100,000 items and haven't found home for about 500,000 items. The sale option is one of those options that we considered and we discounted in this instance.'
Rules of disposal of public assets suggest they could not make a deal like this unless it was run through auction or 'time consuming and expensive' tendering process, he says.
Another reason was the costs required to stamp every book as 'withdrawn' and remove the sleeves, Crookston says.
'We'd have to either employ our existing people away from doing things that they're currently doing or employ additional people to do this … That's quite a considerable, many hundreds of thousands of dollars undertaken.'
Jordan was baffled, saying there's no logic to it because he believes the service doing the disposal would charge a lot to be remove the sleeves and all the materials on books that can't be recycled.
'I don't understand because we could do that for them.'
Crookston rebutted that saying 'collection management 101' principles mean they couldn't allow that.
'We think what's in the best interest of New Zealanders via the National Library is for these books to be destroyed. That's the most cost efficient and cost-effective way to deal with this issue.
'Library leaders around New Zealand and the world know that when there's large disposal projects or processes undertaken with books is that there's strong views held about it because a lot of people just don't like books being destroyed. But in collection management, that's just what a lot of libraries have to go through.'
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Otago Daily Times
7 days ago
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Shop set for influx of half a million books
Hard To Find Books Dunedin manager Blaze Forbes peruses the aisles at the Dowling St second-hand bookshop. PHOTO: GERARD O'BRIEN Half a million books could be bound for Dunedin if the closure of a prominent second-hand bookshop goes ahead, its owner says. While the possible closure of Auckland-based Hard To Find Books had plunged its future into "total chaos", owner Warwick Jordan said he expected its Dunedin store would continue "business as usual". "If anything, it could boost it in the longer run if we end up coming down there." The Auckland bookshop's lease is scheduled to lapse at the end of February next year. Housed in a former convent, the building is owned by the Catholic Church, which decided not to renew the lease as it intended to sell it. The bookshop had occupied the building since 2018 but has had a presence in Auckland for more than 40 years. Mr Jordan said he had wanted the bookshop located somewhere it could stay forever as it was "just too much of a mission to move". "I thought that was the case with where we are. Turns out I was wrong." The contents of the Auckland store could fill an estimated 20 shipping containers — roughly half a million books, he said. It would cost $100,000 alone to move the books and, because he lived above the bookshop, Mr Jordan would also need to look for a new home. "I just don't want to have to go through this again. I'm getting old, but I have no retirement plan whatsoever." He did not believe there was another suitable building in Auckland to house the bookshop. Renting a larger premises was also out of the question. Another option he was looking at was relocating all of its stock down to Dunedin, but they were already "pushing it" for space. "We've got 30,000 square feet in Dunedin pretty much packed already. "We'd be bringing down about half a million books, but we've got over half a million in Dunedin already." While anywhere with enough space was open to consideration, it was "highly likely" the Dunedin store would become the sole retail outlet, Mr Jordan said. Whether they moved everything to Dunedin was a separate issue. Their Auckland stock would at the least end up being sold from out of storage units, which could still get shipped down to Dunedin anyway. He also floated the idea of storing the books in a woolshed at a rural property on the outskirts of Dunedin, or in Milton.
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16-06-2025
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How to destroy 500,000 books
The trucks and the industrial strength paper shredders with rows of 330 sharp-toothed knives on spherical roller bearings operated by hydraulic drives are set to roll out this week and destroy 500,000 books from the National Library—an end point in a long, controversial policy which will forever be regarded by many critics with despair and disgust. Objections to the massive cull managed to prevent the shipping of the books to the Internet Archive. Instead, the books will be destroyed on New Zealand soil. The library announced on Wednesday, 'We have decided to securely dispose of the remaining items, starting immediately.' The speed of it came too fast for any further challenges from Book Guardians Aotearoa (BGA), which gained the support of Helen Clark and Chris Finlayson in its various attempts over the years to keep the books intact. 'They're trying to make it a fait accompli – people who are honest and honourable don't have to rush at things like this sneakily, they know they are doing wrong,' said Warwick Jordan, owner of the secondhand bookstores Hard to Find. He offered to buy the original consignment of 600,000 unwanted books for $160,000 (plus GST). He wrote to the Library in 2020 to outline his proposal. 'They never ever showed any interest in even discussing it.' ReadingRoom spoke with Mark Crookston, the National Library's director of content services, on Friday afternoon. The only object of the interview was to determine the physical intimacies of shredding or destroying 500,000 books, the largest number of culled books in the history of the government's archive library. He said: 'Things are ready to go.' Commercial providers are set to collect 200,000 books from the Wellington premises, and the remaining 300,000 from Whanganui, held in a former police facility. BGA and its allies have tried to stop this happening for six years. In an email, BGA spokesperson Michael Pringle said, 'We suspect that the books will be burnt or, more likely, end up in landfill, as they cannot be recycled as the covers would have to be ripped off. A most symbolic end for them: rotting in a hole in the ground, like so much intellectual life in New Zealand.' Mark Crookston from the National Library said, 'My understanding is that there's recycling at the end of the process.' Industrial shredders include the Twin Shaft Shredder Genox M Series-M300-1200. Its strong blades manufactured from high quality steels are suitable for shredding tough materials. 'Successive governments (both National and Labour-led) have supported this appalling decision all the way to the final destruction of the books,' said Michael Pringle. 'BGA is very sad that it has come to this, and sees it as a severe blow to our national culture and heritage, and to independent scholarship and research. It's not what national and state libraries in the other democratic countries of the world are doing – they are increasing not decreasing their collections – and it exemplifies the lack of interest in and support for arts, heritage, culture and independent research which has been typical of every New Zealand government in the 21st century.' Mark Crookston was asked about the readiness of the 500,000 books to be destroyed. He said, 'Some will be in boxes, some will still be shelves near the loading docks. Some may have already started going. And the providers will take them to where their machinery is. It's a secure document destruction certified process.' Warwick Jordan from Hard to Find claimed, 'They are NOT recycling them. They are going to landfill. Recycling requires all plastic covers to be removed and treated separately – I guarantee no-one is doing that. The whole thing's a lie. Got anyone with a camera who can follow the trucks? They will be going to landfill.' The identity of the commercial firm which will destroy the 500,000 books is confidential. They may have access to a machine such as the Wiema ZM 40 four-shaft shredder. Its cutting configuration comes with two cutting shafts. The shafts can be configured according to the desired particle size, and the width of cutting discs can be variably adapted. Pringle from BGA said, 'The collections of the National Library were built up over successive generations by such great librarians as Geoffrey Alley. To see their destruction now at the hands of those who understand so little of our culture, heritage and history is a grievous act of cultural vandalism, which future generations of New Zealanders will lament.' Crookston from the National Library said, 'It's not something we've taken undertaken lightly but that message has been quite hard to sort of get across.' The library dumped a tranche of 50,000 books at a Lions Club sale in Trentham in 2020. Jordan flew down and bought 50 boxes, stored in two shipping containers at the back of his Auckland store. He told the National Library that year, 'About two thirds of them are useful to us which indicates that about 400,000 of the 600,000 books you want to destroy would likely be useful too.' He estimated the total retail value was 'in the millions', although it would take a long, long time to achieve that. He wrote to the National Library in 2020, 'Just housing 600,000 books would be a big ask for us but it feels like my duty to try and find a way, and if you are serious about them getting to the most homes and being preserved for future generations we are probably the only real option.' The process of shredding books is called hogging. Books go up a conveyor belt and into a chute, where they come out ground. Then the shredded books are baled and sold to paper mills to be turned into other types of paper products. 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Otago Daily Times
12-06-2025
- Otago Daily Times
Dealer sickened by plan to destroy half a million books
The country's largest second-hand book business wants to save half a million books from being disposed of by the National Library of New Zealand. The National Library claims they've been trying to re-home them since 2018, that there's no demand, and that most haven't been requested in decades. They say the process of shredding and recycling them, via a commercial service, has started. Book dealer and Hard To Find Books owner Warwick Jordan says he couldn't sleep last night and felt physically sick. His various offers over the years to take all the books himself haven't been accepted. 'To give you some context, this issue actually goes back to the 1990s. In the late 1990s, the National Library wanted to get rid of about this number of books. Initially, what they did was they started putting them up in small groups in tender. They put two tenders out. I won both of them, a total of about 30,000 books.' The process of dealing with the remainder was stalled when the issue became political, he says, until 2018 when only 5000 out of 45,000 were sold via a Lions Club book sale. Jordan labelled the book sale idea as 'dumb' because the books - although valuable to him - wouldn't be of interest to the average person. The library ended up giving him the leftover from the sale. 'I know what kind of books these guys are destroying. I know that two thirds of them I can use. There's about one third that really is just junk. I mean, it's just no one wants it. It's just out of date.' The books are international, mostly non-fiction and cover a range of topics like were bibliography, religion, philosophy and computer science. Jordan says one example of a book that was going to junk was a two-volume set bibliography of UFO books from the 1950s. He believes it could retail for $300-$500. 'I'm not saying they're all worth that kind of money. But there's a lot of interesting and unusual things that wouldn't sell to the average Joe public. But there are people out there who are interested, specialised interest.' Jordan says he continued to make offers for the remainder, including packing, delivery, and paying money for them. Although now he longer can afford to make the same financial offer as he did back then, he's willing to find a way to make it work. 'I mean, if I want to make money, I'd go and sell something that actually sells. I want to save the books. It's a disgrace. There could be books in there that is the only copy in the world. Who knows?' National Library director of content services Mark Crookston told Afternoons they had undertaken a range of considerations before reaching this decision. 'We've found homes for about 100,000 items and haven't found home for about 500,000 items. The sale option is one of those options that we considered and we discounted in this instance.' Rules of disposal of public assets suggest they could not make a deal like this unless it was run through auction or 'time consuming and expensive' tendering process, he says. Another reason was the costs required to stamp every book as 'withdrawn' and remove the sleeves, Crookston says. 'We'd have to either employ our existing people away from doing things that they're currently doing or employ additional people to do this … That's quite a considerable, many hundreds of thousands of dollars undertaken.' Jordan was baffled, saying there's no logic to it because he believes the service doing the disposal would charge a lot to be remove the sleeves and all the materials on books that can't be recycled. 'I don't understand because we could do that for them.' Crookston rebutted that saying 'collection management 101' principles mean they couldn't allow that. 'We think what's in the best interest of New Zealanders via the National Library is for these books to be destroyed. That's the most cost efficient and cost-effective way to deal with this issue. 'Library leaders around New Zealand and the world know that when there's large disposal projects or processes undertaken with books is that there's strong views held about it because a lot of people just don't like books being destroyed. But in collection management, that's just what a lot of libraries have to go through.'
