 BookCrossing, BC, BCing, or BXing, is defined as the practice of leaving a book in a public place to be picked up and read by others, who then do likewise. The idea is to release books into the "wild" to be found by other people, often strangers. The analogy is with the ornithological practice of ringing birds to track their movements. Taken from this link: http://bookcrossing. ...
Wiktionary has related dictionary definitions, such as: book A book is a collection of sheets of paper, parchment or other material, bound together along one edge within covers. ...
One definition of public space or a public place is a place where anyone has a right to come without paying an entrance or other fee. ...
This article or section is in need of attention from an expert on the subject. ...
Bird ringing (also known as bird banding) is an aid to studying wild birds, by attaching a small individually numbered metal or plastic ring to their legs or wings, so that various aspects of the birds life can be studied by the ability to re-find the same individual...
If someone decides to release a book via the BookCrossing.com website, the book has to be registered in order to get a BCID (BookCrossing ID) number so it can be tracked. The person who finds or "catches" the book is then requested to log onto the BookCrossing web site and make a journal entry, and then pass on the book when he or she has finished reading it. This page as shown in the aol 9. ...
There are no charges for membership but donations received go towards the maintenance of the servers and continue the exile of pop-up ads from the website. Members who order BookCrossing items through the supply store or BC Newsstand will receive small golden wing symbols on the sides of their screen names. Dozens of pop-up ads cover a desktop. ...
History Ron Hornbaker conceived the idea in March 2001 [1] inspired by currency bill tracking. The website was launched around four weeks later, on April 17, 2001. Since then, it has grown into a global movement: by 7 May 2006 the site had around 460,000 members (though only about 10% of those registered are actually active[2]) and over 3,000,000 books registered. In August 2004 the Concise Oxford Dictionary added the word "bookcrossing", as defined above. There are a number of websites that track migrations of banknotes, just like ornithologists track migrations of birds by ringing them. ...
April 17 is the 107th day of the year in the Gregorian calendar (108th in leap years). ...
2001: A Space Odyssey. ...
May 7 is the 127th day of the year in the Gregorian Calendar (128th in leap years). ...
2006 (MMVI) is a common year starting on Sunday of the Gregorian calendar. ...
Concise Oxford Dictionary (COD) is probably the best-known smaller Oxford dictionaries. ...
In 2004, BookCrossing featured briefly as part of a storyline in the Australian soap opera Neighbours. 2004 (MMIV) was a leap year starting on Thursday of the Gregorian calendar. ...
This article or section does not cite its references or sources. ...
Neighbours is a long-running Australian soap opera, running daily episodes of 22 minutes (excluding commercials). ...
In May 2005, BookCrossing.com won two People's Voice awards in the Webby Awards for best community website and best social/networking website. BookCrossing also featured in a BBC Radio project broadcast as 84 Book Crossing Road, which involved releasing 84 copies of Helene Hanff's book 84 Charing Cross Road around the world. Template:Diffgggtgerent calendars 2005 (MMV) was a common year starting on Saturday of the Gregorian calendar. ...
Presented by The International Academy of Digital Arts and Sciences, the Webby Awards are a set of awards presented to the worlds best websites. The awards have been given out since 1996. ...
84, Charing Cross Road is the title of a book by Helene Hanff, published in 1970 about the long correspondence (1949-1969) between Hanff, a resident of New York City, and Frank Doel of the Marks & Co. ...
Process
 Books are "set free" into public places... After registering books on the website and attaching print-out bookplates with the registration number and information about BookCrossing (usually on or inside the front cover), the releaser may follow his or her books on their trip in the "wild" and read the finders' opinions or comments, if the person reports his or her catch on the BookCrossing website (see below). ImageMetadata File history File links Download high resolution version (948x1200, 376 KB) Summary Book released onto a bench at a bus stop in Martin Place, Sydney. ...
ImageMetadata File history File links Download high resolution version (948x1200, 376 KB) Summary Book released onto a bench at a bus stop in Martin Place, Sydney. ...
Furthering the BookCrossing idea Contact between BookCrossing members (called BookCrossers) is facilitated through forums on the website, email lists (many countries have their own email lists as well as a main international list), an unofficial "wish-list" system, local meetups and national conventions. Gaia Online, the largest English language forum-based community as of April 2005 — powered by a modified version of phpBB. An Internet forum is a facility on the World Wide Web for holding discussions, or the web application software used to provide the facility. ...
Electronic mailing lists are a special usage of e-mail that allows for widespread distribution of information to many Internet users. ...
Meetup. ...
Metro Toronto Convention Centre, late 2004. ...
This has led to a number of different ways for books to be sent between BookCrossers. These include:
- Trades: Where a BookCrosser swaps books with another member.
- Random Acts of BookCrossing Kindness (RABCKs): Where a book is sent by a BookCrosser to another member without expecting the receiving member to send any book in return.
- Bookrays and Bookrings: A group of people "subscribe" to a book on the internet and the book is mailed from one participant on the list to the next, often across continents. The only difference is that books in bookrings will return to the original owner while books in bookrays do not. Instead, the last person on the list to receive the book gets a choice whether to release it or to organise another bookring or bookray.
- Bookboxes: Similar to bookrings and bookrays — each participant, except the original sender, should however replace a specified number of books with volumes of his own of the same genre.
Where a book is sent to a known individual then this is sometimes known as a "controlled release" in order to differentiate it from a "wild release". A genre is a division of a particular form of art according to criteria particular to that form. ...
Official BookCrossing Zones, which are sometimes called OBCZs or OBZs are located in places like Starbucks coffee shops, restaurants or other places where accessible to the public. These OBCZs refer to bookshelves placed there so that BookCrossers could catch or release books. Starbucks (NASDAQ: SBUX, SEHK: 4337) is a large multinational chain of coffee shops with corporate headquarters in Seattle, Washington. ...
In mid-2005 BBC Shropshire radio producer Jim Hawkins began presenting a weekly BookCrossing update following the appearance on his show of BookCrosser Steve Lucas. The program has attracted a global audience. The British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) is the largest publicly-funded radio and television broadcasting corporation of the United Kingdom (see British television) and the world. ...
Jim Hawkins, smooth talker Jim Hawkins is a radio presenter for BBC Radio Shropshire. ...
 ...where they are then "caught" by members of the public. ImageMetadata File history File links Download high resolution version (768x1024, 172 KB) Summary Book in the process of being picked up by a member of the public. ...
ImageMetadata File history File links Download high resolution version (768x1024, 172 KB) Summary Book in the process of being picked up by a member of the public. ...
Controversy In 2003, BookCrossing was criticised by the author Jessica Adams who claimed that books were being "devalued" by the site as BookCrossing could lead to lower sales of books and, therefore, the reduction in royalties being paid to authors. Most BookCrossers dispute this argument however. They claim that the site introduces readers to authors and genres that they have not read before, that the site gets more people to take up or reclaim reading as a hobby, and that some members, having read a book that they have enjoyed, will buy extra copies to distribute through BookCrossing. A royalty is a sum paid to the creator of performance art for the use of that art. ...
The word author has several meanings: The author of a book, story, article or the like, is the person who has written it (or is writing it). ...
A hobby is a spare-time recreational pursuit. ...
In March 2005, Caroline Martin, managing director of the publishers HarperPress, said in a speech that "book publishing as a whole has its very own potential Napster crisis in the growing practice of book crossing". Second version (revised 2001) of Napster logo: Cat wearing headphones. ...
Related New variants of BookCrossing include Postcrossing and CDCrossing or DiscCrossing. Another concept is BookRelay. Through this, members send a book that they have read to another person who requested it, and request another book that they would like to read. Just like a relay, books switch owners through the mail and not by releasing. en:Postcrossing Postcrossing is a project similar do Bookcrossing, a project in which books are left at publicized locations for others to pick up and use for free, except it is designed to allow people to receive postcards from all over the world, for free. ...
PhotoTag is the original idea on which BookCrossing is based. The difference is that PhotoTag uses disposable cameras which are passed on to friends and strangers and then returned to the original releaser when the film is used up. The photos are then uploaded to the PhotoTag website.
Geocaching is a similar system that uses Global Positioning System and the internet to lead users to a cache of "treasures". Some members integrate the two systems and BookCrossing books are placed in Geocaches. A Geocache in Germany Geocaching, is an outdoor treasure-hunting game in which participants (called geocachers) use a Global Positioning System receiver or other navigational techniques to hide and seek containers (called geocaches or caches) anywhere in the world. ...
GPS satellite in orbit, image courtesy NASA GPS redirects here. ...
Currency bill tracking is a similar system that tracks the movement of individual bills — a dollar bill or a five euro note, for example — according to their serial number. Wheresgeorge.com and whereswilly.com track U.S. and Canadian bills, respectively. There are a number of websites that track migrations of banknotes, just like ornithologists track migrations of birds by ringing them. ...
A dollar bill can be of various kinds of currency: Federal Reserve dollar bill (modern U.S. currency) United States note (historic U.S. currency) Silver certificate (historic U.S. currency) Gold certificate (historic U.S. currency) Canada dollar (Canadian currency) Australian dollar (Australian currency) New Zealand dollar (New Zealand...
The Euro symbol The euro (EUR or €) is the single currency for 12 European Union member states. ...
Re-usable fabric gift bags with unique identifiers may be purchased from wrapsacks.com and tracked in much the same way as books registered and released through Bookcrossing. The bags are used in place of less earth-friendly paper giftwrap. Since the bag is intended to be re-used by the receiver, its progress can be tracked as it goes from receiver to receiver.
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