Taken from this article:
http://www.aeonmagazine.com/being-human/julian-baggini-burni.../
I often go to yard and estate sales and I usually find a complete set of these books or some other encyclopedia, and I always take a quick look at them and always wonder if anyone has ever used them. Then I wonder if I could make money off of them on ebay.
Most of the time, I don't even bother. I often wondered what happens to these books. I know practically no one buys them; I went to an estate sale or two where they took everything except the encyclopedia set and the neat display case it was sitting in. Do they go to bookstores? Libraries? The garbage bin?
After seeing so many books like that, you start to appreciate just what the internet does. A lot of waste gets created and the internet helps take a bit of that waste away... And yet I still feel sad to watch those books burn.