5th
November
2007
Book Exchange Sites
Sharing never used to be so much fun (if you don’t believe me, just ask the two-year-old nearest to you). But some of the new book exchange sites make sharing books a fun, social, tree-saving activity. A couple of my favorites are BookCrossing and BookMooch.
- BookCrossing: At BookCrossing, they recognize that “a book is a terrible thing to waste” and, for this reason, the site exists to “release books into the wild”. Users register any books that they have onto the site and then set the book free to travel the world and to encounter new readers. Books are to be left in public places where other readers will find them, pick them up, read them, and pass them on (site suggestions include park benches, coffee shops, hotels, but it really could be just about anywhere you can think of where someone else might want to pick it up (which pretty much excludes public restrooms)). One of the most fun aspects of BookCrossing is that a book’s journey across the world and across multiple readers can be tracked through the site by means of the BCID (Book Crossing ID) that has been assigned to the book.
- BookMooch operates on the mooch principle. Now “mooch” is not a word with overly positive connotations (witness WordNet: mooch (n)–someone who tries to get something free or mooch (v)–to be a parasite), but at BookMooch, mooching is a positive activity.I mooch a book from you, you mooch a book from me, and so on and so forth. Once you join BookMooch, you can list all of the books that you would be willing to trade. If one of the books that you listed is on another person’s mooch list, then they will be notified and they can request the book. The sender of the book earns credit for sending the book (credit that can be used in mooching other desired books that are listed by others) and the moocher gets the book. It’s a win-win situation. Through BookMooch, wishlists actually come true when users and books and credits match up.
A couple of other notable exchange sites (albeit, slightly less creative and fun, they are equally useful for exchange purposes):
- Bookins: The Bookins tagline is “Find your old books a new home” and “Swap books, we make it easy.” At Bookins, they call their members “budget conscious bibliophiles.” In other words, the idea is that instead of paying full retail price for the books that you want to read, you only pay for the shipping and handling that it costs to mail them to you. Members exchange books of equal value by using the Bookins system that automatically assigned point values (point values being based on aspects such as retail price, popularity). In this way, bibliophiles can help other bibliophiles and books get used instead of sitting on shelves getting dusty.
- Paperbackswap: PaperBackSwap is based on a similar principle to Bookins; as they say, “We are a group of readers who share books with each other (NOT just paperbacks) for nothing more than the cost of postage!”
With just those few sites, your library could become a continuously rotating, continuously evolving organism. And who knows what reading new books and ideas might do to your mind…
posted in book lover's resources, technology, web 2.0, social tools | 2 Comments
