'I literally weep': anguish as New Zealand's National Library culls 600,000 books

Academics, historians, researchers and scholars feel a literary crime is taking place during the distraction of the global pandemic

Sheltered in the bunkers beneath the National Library in New Zealand's capital rests a treasure trove of books, including nearly 2,200 first editions that have been carefully looked after for decades. But not for much longer.

The overseas collection" - which includes a first edition of Richard Neville's Play Power, a 1912 edition of Jane Austen's Sense and Sensibility and multiple first editions of Graham Greene novels - is now headed out the door.