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About the Archive — Keeping Our Place in Literary History
Edit Hero Subtitle:
A digital sanctuary dedicated to the often overlooked artistry and history of bookstore bookmarks, and the bookstores that created them.
Essay Title
Essay Paragraph 1:
A universal experience. You hand the clerk your money, but before the bookseller hands over your stack of books, they quietly slip a small piece of cardstock between the pages. The bookstore bookmark. It's free, utilitarian, and easily forgotten and discarded.
Essay Paragraph 2:
Yet these humble slips of paper—printed on cardstock, or even just printer paper, adorned with illustrations, stamped with opening hours and poetic slogans—became tangible relics of literary communities. They marked not only our place in a novel, but a specific moment in time and geography.
Essay Paragraph 3:
A bookmark is the quietest ambassador of a bookstore. Decades after the OPEN has dimmed and the lease has expired, the bookmark remains. Often inside a forgotten volume.
Larry Hoefling Quote Callout:
“A bit like viewing gravestones, they underscore the often-fleeting nature of success” — Larry Hoefling, Owner of the (now closed) McHuston's Bookstore in Broken Arrow, OK.
Mission Section Title:
Mission Body:
The Bookstore Bookmark Archive was established to preserve, catalog, and research these ephemeral pieces of history and learn about the bookstores that distributed them.
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Frequently Asked Questions
Who is behind the bookstore bookmark archive?
What kind of bookmarks do you want?
Can I just send you photographs of my bookmarks?
I have some, but they are in terrible condition, do you still want them?
Will you buy the bookmarks from me? or pay for shipping?
