This summer I saw on the bulletin board of a specific KH a strange letter, the info of which I'd like to share with you.
It came not from the GB or the Branch office, but from the local Evangelizers School. What it said was roughly this:
Because they want to enrich the School's library, they ask from the brothers in the region (i.e. about 6-7 circuits) to find all the old literature in their homes, escpecially from the Russel and Rutherford era, and hand them over to the School! They understand that many brothers may have emotional ties with those books, but it is for a good cause, so that the students in the Evangelizers School can have a full library in order to be able to search ''all the deep truths" (some verse cited here, Timothy or something).
You understand how shocked I was, seeing that hypocritical letter. I have been at the Evangelizers School (MTS then) and I assure you there's no need for such old literature. We had some old literature in the library, true, but no way did he sit and study that old books. It would be completely useless.
So, the "we need them for the School" claim is completely BS. That leaves one conclusion: they want to get rid of really old books, which are a complete liability now, and they do it very abrupltly and with real nerve: they simply ask of the brothers to give them their old books!
The fact is that in that specific region of the country, so-called apostasy is an issue; there are many "apostates" in the region's main city who do a kind of a "preacing work", i.e. go where the jws street-preach, and engage in talks with the jws. In the same city and region, there are a lot of older JWs who have in their possession a real 'treasure' (for them, at least) of very old literature, going back to Russel's era. For me, all this old WT literature is of zero value (if not sub-zero), but I love books generally, so imagine what it feels like to be asked from the "Mother Org" to hand over the books with which you grew and cherished for decades!
Has any of you heard of a similar guideline in your country/region? It would be interesting to know if this was just a caprice of the local School, or if it is a directive from the Borg.