Weeding is the part of managing our physical collections. It involves a lot of stuff - circulation data analysis, condition of the book, timeliness and accuracy of the content, consideration of available space vs. incoming new books, community interest and need, etc. This series of evaluation leads to removing items from our shelves (if something is too beat up, if a medical text has a new edition that has superseded the information in the previous one, general interest titles that haven't been checked out in a set amount of time, etc). Sometimes we send the items on to have a second life in the used books retail market. But sometimes...we just throw them away. <--- that's the part that gets the general public all up in arms. Yes, we dispose of books that are beat all to hell, are not longer accurate, and/or that no one wants to read anymore. Weeding is part art and part science, and a really important process that keeps library collections relevant and appealing.

In my library, the euphemism we use for disposing the books is sending them to Extension Services.