Deaccession Project
Sexy Librarian began as a component of an exhibition about deaccession in
American public libraries.
Julia Weist wrote the manuscript for Sexy Librarian while preparing for this show,
a multi-year project which involved building a sculptural archive of non-fiction
books withdrawn from library collections. This work was a collaboration
with artist Maayan Pearl.
For Julia, the writing process provided an outlet for sympathy and an expanded
empathetic capacity for the discarded literature the artists were working with.
Penning a romance novel modeled after the formulas in the deaccessioned love stories
that they’d found allowed her to experience rejection: she sent the manuscript to six
commercial publishing houses and they each turned it down.
Publishing the project with Slush Editions has begun another experiment about
the popularity and longevity of romance novels. Learn more.
collection of discard library books curated by Lumi Tan. Second image: Discarded modified card catalog
of deaccession findings. Photos: Luke Stettner