Perhaps the paper has degraded, and they were no longer readable, or perhaps they are very out of date technical materials, at the very least it will keep them out of the land-fill for awhile and in good repair if nothing has been done the attach them to each other . . . or it is just sad.
Can't tell, too thoughtful today to keep emotion out of it.

Libraries throw out tons of books that are "donated" even though they are garbage - water damaged, missing pages, extremely out of date (ie, now full of misinformation), or otherwise useless. This reality is usually hidden from the public, because there is always an uninformed outcry. Being able to give these books new life is awesome.

Lovely desk.

Cynthia, CP, I know all that. It still bugs me on an emotional level.

From the comments on the linked article:

New books? That is lame.

It's just paper and ink.

New books? That's just sad.

Even new books are thrown away or otherwise destroyed all the time. There's nothing magical about any general mass market book.

As long as they're using books nobody wanted (whether new or as the linked to page says recycled) then I don't care.

But yeah I remember the various hysterical people from my public library days. We'd explain it was a book that had been on our shelves for 40 years and hadn't been checked out in almost 20 and even the local prison didn't want it and the Friends of the Library weren't able to sell it for $0.05 so yes and by the way this book is in the collection of the local university library and so available through ILL, so yes we're throwing it away so that we can put a book people will actually use on the shelves.

Most libraries are not archives. So long as that desk didn't remove from availability any piece of information then have at it as far I'm concerned. Though it makes for an ugly desk with the books in that orientation (and I suspect that none of the titles are visible to minimize the complaints).