Libraries remove unborrowed books and sell them. Borrowed books stay on the shelf. That's what they do with books.
Librarians try to “market” books based on what they think the public wants or needs.
They try to assure a variety of books put forward, with a special emphasis on “good for you” books.
Books deed as “not good for you” are likely to be shelved in the back.
in practice, libraries use the Dewey decimal system, but that excluded the many “exhibits” of “good for you” material.
I don’t mean “good for you” in a good or bad way. It’s simply what the librarian believes will be most helpful to the readers.
There are currently some very real and important controversies in public libraries that have no clear solution.
Article is about a librarian in Virginia. OP is commenting about practice in India. Unless there is some secret code to global librarian conduct, chances are you're all correct.
I disagree with this. Libraries are notorious for being open about their processes; they will happily reveal flows of materials, down to the item.
So probably, no one had borrowed it in the time between. I was very happy the book had not been thrown out.
Yet when I took the book off the shelf it looked like no one had touched it in many years.
Unlike digital world where storage is cheap, in physical world it is limited. Thus focus on what the customers want is reasonable.
Archival libraries are different game. There keeping at least one copy is often reasonable.
You've also got to look at what does it add to the collection, might it be used in the future, is it available elsewhere, etc.
But, at the end of the day, most libraries aren't archives. Having a collection of books that nobody uses doesn't provide a community service.