News the Government's set to shred half a million books from the National Library is being described as standard management. 

Books including religious texts, Shakespeare, and Virginia Woolf are among them, with the cull expected to save about a million dollars in storage costs.  

Library and Information Association Executive Director Laura Marshall told Andrew Dickens books are destroyed to make room as part of collection management. 

She says it's specific to the particular library or institute, and if they kept every book published, they'd need a 50 storey building. 

Around 50 thousand books were offered to other libraries, Marshall says, and another 50 thousand to charities, adding at some point a book's time is up. 

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