book dumping

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book dumping (uncountable)

1. (idiomatic) The practice of donating old used books that burden rather than assist communities.
   • 1993 Bernth Lindfors, "Desert Gold: Irrigation Scemes for Ending the Book Drought," in D. Riemenschneider and F. Shultze-Engler, eds. African Literatures in the Eighties, Rodopi, Amsterdam, 1993. p. 36

     ...there is some sensitivity in Africa to being the recipient of the West's unwanted or secondhand surplus goods, and sometimes well-intentioned gifts of educational materials have been criticized by their recipients as examples of "book dumping" - equivalent, that is, to garbage disposal or to the removal to Africa of European and American toxic wastes.

   • 2003 Donna Nixon, "From North Carolina to KwaZulu Natal: World Library Partnership," North Carolina Libraries, Winter 2003, pp. 146-151.

     Many book donation programs, though well-intentioned, engage in “book dumping,” a practice of shipping old used books that burden rather than assist communities.

   • 2015 Elizabeth Giles, "Evaluating Lubuto Library Collections: A Case Study in Dynamic and Strategic Children’s Collection Development," IFLA WLIC 2015

     ... the unfortunate reality for much of the developing world has been that a combination of book dumping, poverty and underfunding of libraries has severely limited the ability of librarians to collect relevant, high-quality resources (Sturges, 2014; Edem, 2010; Otike, 1993).

2. (literal) The discarding of quantities of books.
   • 1996 October 14, Nicholson Baker, “The Author vs. the Library”, in The New Yorker, page 50:

     Since January, the book-dumping has ceased, following an expose by the San Francisco Chronicle.