Dear gardener librarians, book smellers and textual explorers,
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Special Issue 19 is harvested. Welcome! Here every librarian (librarians of their own library) is welcome to garden Leeszaal and discover what this library offers. We will see behind the curtains of how the unwanted books are kept in this library. Leeszaal is not a real library, it's an open-ended story where everyone is a member; a plot waiting to be tended to and tilled. Volunteers sort all the books that people contribute. Some of them aren't going to make it to the shelves. They will end up as a pile of paper in trash bins, waiting to be recycled. And that's ok.
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This publication is a momentary snapshot of the current state of a library seen through the metaphor of gardening; pruning, gleaning, growing, grafting and harvesting. Garden Leeszaal is an open conversation; a collective writing tool, a cooperative collage and an archive. We would like to ask everyone to think of the library as a garden. For us, being a gardener means caring; caring for the people and books that form this space. </p>
<p>This experimental publication sprouted in co-production with Simon Browne and the bootleg library, Cara Manuela Mayer Yepez, Irmak Ertaş, Stephen Kerr, Aglaia Petta, Ada Varriale and Boyana Stoilova.
