"I was taught in library school, in 1980, which was over 20 years before Baker's book was published, that discarding serviceable print material this way was a bad idea that had been abandoned in the 1950s."

I remember a rant on this topic from my father, who's a printing historian and who described at length all the disadvantages of the practice. My impression was that he was talking about print newspapers discarded by libraries in recent decades, though I could be wrong. I could ask him about this, if you like.