Sharing books via Bookcrossing
Published on 19 May 2006 at 6:16 am.
4 Comments.
Filed under Edong's Dreams, Nets, Webs, Infostructure.
I had two online projects during the Holy Week break.
The first was an “idle assets” redistribution project, the other was an “re-connection of lost networks”.
Idle assets redistribution
I read about bookcrossing (http://www.bookcrossing.com) when it was featured as an innovative idea in “500 ways to change the world”.
The principle behind bookcrossing is:
After reading a book, instead of putting it in a shelf, share it to other people. Share it to strangers, even! Then, through a bookcrossing ID (BCID), readers can look-up who else has read that particular book before and any other journal entries related to that book.
This was perfect for my vacation project. In our house in Baguio where my parents live, we have loads of books in shelves. Some of these books haven’t been touched for more than 5 or ten years. Some of the books, I read during my childhood. And though they touched my life once upon a time, they haven’t had the chance to touch other people’s lives.
Thus, I saw book crossing as a nice way to share some books to more people. Think of it as a global collection of books in a global library, being passed on from one person to another.
So I registered 20 books, some of them academic text books. The textbooks, I dropped off at UP Baguio, I hope they find use for it. There were books I left at the Victory Liner bus terminal in Baguio. It was entertaining as I watched a young boy, around 8 years old, poking at the book, peeking into the first or second page of a romance novel (the harlequin or sweet dreams type) from my sister’s high school days.
I looked up the books that were released by fellow-Filipinos. The list brought up only 3 or so books. That wasn’t much. I was expecting to have a thriving community of book lovers doing their stuff on Book Crossings.
Maybe Book Crossings is more appropriate for more developed countries where Internet penetration is higher, and where people are less likely to hold-on to a found book.
Let’s see what happens to my books. Go on, fly, my books!
ka edong
Visit my shelf: www.bookcrossing.com/siredwin siredwin.bookcrossing.com
-
Related Articles on Technobiography:
|
|
ka edong on 9 Jun 2006 at 8:04 pm: 1
jeeeez,
two months past and none of my books have been journaled by their finders …
I therefore conclude that bookcrossing is not for Pinoys in the Philippines … it doesn’t work
SephieG on 24 Jul 2006 at 8:23 pm: 2
Don’t give up hope - some books are journalled after years in the wilderness!
ka edong on 25 Jul 2006 at 7:14 am: 3
Hi SephieG,
Not giving up hope. It’s just that there may be more effective ways of sharing the gift of reading. Like Aklatang Pambata: http://www.aklatangpambata.org/ .
Keep on bookcrossing, SephieG!
Technobiography » Manigong Bookmooch.com on 1 Jan 2008 at 11:36 pm: 4
[…] I’m thinking about how I could get access to paperback copies of these books (not e-books) more affordably. I considered bookcrossings.com in the past but concluded that the book sharing model of bookcrossings is not fit for Philippine culture. I also found bookcrossings to be too un-directed. […]