Hidden nodes is a module for people that like the idea of unpublishing content in drupal but not the effect it has.  When you unpublish content in drupal it starts to disappear from lots of places that you might not want it to, particularly the menu system.

Hidden nodes provides a simple node_access style permission along with “view hidden content” to remove the content from view of different roles.  This is an important distinction because it will still show up in menus and books for people that CAN see this content.  This is very useful for quazi-admin roles that might want people to edit material in the same structure that it will be presented, without it being “live”.

Hidden Nodes also provides outline designer 2.x integration so that you can quickly and visually hide content or entirely branches of content.  For more information about the developer side of this module, see my previous blog post about Understanding Node Access in drupal