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    Book exchnge boxes

    One of the small, but really nice things about living here are local book-exchange boxes. Most locally are donated by the Rotary Club (see below) but other organisations maintain them too. The closest to us is close by the local school. It's intriguing to see what people give away. Yesterday I got a copy of John McPhee's The Crofter and the Laird. McPhee's writing was one of the reasons I bought The New Yorker for so many years, but it's been ages since I read anything by him (amazingly he's now 87.) In the past I've scrobbled several volumes by Foucault, bit of a surprise. I guess the legacy of someone's university career. Not only is the box a great way of acquiring and disposing of books but it provides a bit of an insight into the community and their reading habits.





    Argh! There's a typo in the thread title. How can I change it?
    Last edited by Amor de Cosmos; 10-09-2018, 17:56.

    #2
    There are a lot of those here. Mostly kid-oriented, I think.

    Clever and handy but I hope it doesn’t undercut support for actual libraries.

    We also have a big annual AAUW book sale. I donated about a ton of books, including comics, to them a few years back. But I haven’t bought anything there in a while. I still own a lot of books I haven’t read. I went through a long dumb phase of buying books I never got around to reading.

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      #3
      Ours (by eyeball) are about 40% kid oriented. I read a lot of books I know I won't open again but used to keep anyway, this seems a good way of passing them on. I don't think they're affecting our local library much. Many of their loans are digital these days, and it's also very much a community meeting place

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        #4
        We have two full sized bookcases in our communal laundry room that are used for this purpose and maintained by a resident who worked as a senior librarian for decades.

        It is a nice resource to have.

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          #5
          Originally posted by Amor de Cosmos View Post
          Ours (by eyeball) are about 40% kid oriented. I read a lot of books I know I won't open again but used to keep anyway, this seems a good way of passing them on. I don't think they're affecting our local library much. Many of their loans are digital these days, and it's also very much a community meeting place
          Yeah, I think that’s the future of libraries. The actual stacks of books are mostly obsolete, but the need for librarians to help people navigate the endless ocean of information has never been greater. And, as you say, the buildings themselves are useful meeting places or “third spaces” as somebody once said.

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            #6
            Most English villages now seem to have these in the old phone box. All the villages near where my parents live anyway
            Last edited by ad hoc; 09-09-2018, 19:13.

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              #7
              That’s great! Those old phone boxes are beautiful, but there’s not much need for phones in phone boxes.

              Perhaps these could also be used for DVDs.

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                #8
                Yes, great way of recycling phone boxes. Our book box gets the odd DVD from time to time. They seem to go very quickly.

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                  #9
                  I think you change the thread title by going into "Edit Post" then "Go Advanced"

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                    #10
                    Those 'free little library' things are all over Toronto. Lots in our 'hood, too. I'd love to have one on our property, but we're on a major intersection of high-school kids in one direction and middle-school kids in the other. It wouldn't last a month before it was torched.

                    LFL is happy everyone is doing this, but apparently you're supposed to pay a fee to use the name. Fuck that.

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                      #11
                      Yes, the red phone boxes work brilliantly for these, and the parish councils can often buy them from BT for £1 when they go out of service. Our village is going to do this soon.




                      Another popular thing to put in them is a defib.

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                        #12
                        Hmm - those two boxes hinge in opposite directions. Never thought about that before.

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                          #13
                          Well.....think about it.

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                            #14
                            OK, done.

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                              #15
                              Originally posted by Satchmo Distel View Post
                              I think you change the thread title by going into "Edit Post" then "Go Advanced"
                              Doesn't seem to work for me. I can make the change that way, but it doesn't save it. Thanks anyway

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                                #16
                                PM Snake

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                                  #17
                                  Originally posted by Kevin S View Post
                                  Yes, the red phone boxes work brilliantly for these, and the parish councils can often buy them from BT for £1 when they go out of service. Our village is going to do this soon.

                                  Another popular thing to put in them is a defib.
                                  I was going to say the same thing – around where my grandad lives in north Norfolk they're gradually colonising the decommissioned red phone boxes with defibrillators. His village joined that particular club a couple of years back, which was a bit of a shame as previously theirs had briefly been a miniature art gallery and community noticeboard. I recognise that the defib is probably of more practical benefit, of course.

                                  My local newsagents has a book exchange box now, which was an unexpected thing to see appear a while back. I first came across the concept a few years ago (via geocaching, with which this can neatly overlap) when I encountered BookCrossing, which still appears to be a thing – it's a somewhat more 'structured' way of releasing your unwanted tomes into the wild, in that you can label them with a unique ID and thus track their onward movement afterwards if future owners register their progress.

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                                    #18
                                    We have these all over Frankfurt and I think they're a wonderful thing. I regularly leave bundles of mainly English language books in the one down the road from us, and they're usually all gone when I look the next day. I like to think they've been taken by people eager to improve their language skills and not by an unscrupulous second hand book seller in a van who does the rounds every morning before dawn.

                                    I got way more proof copies of the US edition of Rock n Roll Soccer than I have space for, so I've taken to signing them and leaving them in there, explaining who I am and asking them very kindly to bring the book back if they enjoyed it, and to possibly leave a review on amazon. The books go, but so far the reviews have not appeared... But I'm just happy to clear the shelf space.

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                                      #19
                                      Originally posted by imp View Post
                                      I've taken to signing them and leaving them in there
                                      This sounded magnificently egotistical until I read the rest of the sentence, imp! I hope you do get some reviews in this way eventually.

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                                        #20
                                        Originally posted by Various Artist View Post
                                        I was going to say the same thing – around where my grandad lives in north Norfolk they're gradually colonising the decommissioned red phone boxes with defibrillators. His village joined that particular club a couple of years back, which was a bit of a shame as previously theirs had briefly been a miniature art gallery and community noticeboard. I recognise that the defib is probably of more practical benefit, of course.

                                        My local newsagents has a book exchange box now, which was an unexpected thing to see appear a while back. I first came across the concept a few years ago (via geocaching, with which this can neatly overlap) when I encountered BookCrossing, which still appears to be a thing – it's a somewhat more 'structured' way of releasing your unwanted tomes into the wild, in that you can label them with a unique ID and thus track their onward movement afterwards if future owners register their progress.
                                        Could be useful even when handing books into the charity shop, see how far they circulate.

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