How an Irkutsk resident turned a waste collection point into a book rescue project just a stone's throw from Decembrist Square in the historic center of Irkutsk, in the yard of a house at 1 Krasnokazachiya Street there is a place called "Book Shelter". This is a second hand store for books that were forced to leave their home. About one hundred thousand publications are stored on four dunams of land. In 2026, Yevgeny Gintov's project, which is now known far beyond the borders of his hometown, will be ten years old. People abandoned some books, others were deleted by libraries and institutions. Everyone from the "book shelter" is once again scattered throughout the city: to students and doctors, to hospitals and orphanages, to regional libraries and to readers abroad. The shelter started with a paper waste collection point and a shelf made of beer crates. Today it is a complete system: books are received here, sorted, stored, sold for a nominal fee and transported to where they are needed. And the more expensive the new publications, the less of them are printed, and the more authors and texts disappear from the free sale, the more the role of such a book reserve becomes clear. An eyewitness journalist visited the book shelter and spoke with its founder Yevgeni Gintov.