Abstract

This special section represents the continuing of a project aimed at publicly debat­ing the heritage of the agents involved in book production and circulation. Focusing on bookseller’s heritage, we try to address, both in the analytical introduction and in the two contributions, its invisible character as a topic of research, safekeeping, and disclosure. It is, therefore, urgent to discuss the heritage and historical status of booksellers and bookshops’ archives and memorabilia, just as much as with those of publishers, as these spaces are fun­damental in the construction of print culture as well in the history of book and publishing. But it is also urgent to inscribe the debate in action and inter-institutional collaboration frameworks, in order to stimulate policy making and public awareness allowing in a system­atic fashion to save, gather and keep one of the most crucial elements of the written collec­tive memory. The statements referred to are from Fátima Ribeiro de Medeiros and Livreiros da Sá da Costa.