The big book swap
For the last couple of years I’ve given away books through BookMooch. I grit my teeth a little when I have to pay for postage, but at least it gets the book off my shelf.
On the other hand, I sometimes ask for a book, and it’s a delight to pull the package from my letterbox without having paid a cent for it: no purchase cost, no postage cost — it’s just free.
BookMooch is a community for exchanging used books.
BookMooch lets you give away books you no longer need in exchange for books you really want.
- Give & receive: Every time you give someone a book, you earn a point and can get any book you want from anyone else at BookMooch. Once you’ve read a book, you can keep it forever or put it back into BookMooch for someone else, as you wish.
- No cost: there is no cost to join or use this web site: your only cost is mailing your books to others.
- Help charities: you can also give your points to charities we work with, such as children’s hospitals (so a sick kid can get a free book delivered to their bed), Library fund, African literacy, or to us to thank us for running this web site <grin>.
- World wide: You can request books from other countries, in other languages. …
[Via : BookMooch Overview.]
Could your organisation use thise service? How about giving away some of the books you produce (if you produce any)? Are there books you’d like to receive?
Do you have clients who could use thise service? As at September 2008 the statistics show Bookmooch has more than 500,000 books listed for giving.
How can you use BookMooch?
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EYC Facebook page
Remember we have an Engage your Community Facebook page where you can start and join in the discussion, and experiment with Facebook amongst friends. See you there!
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Notes from Engage your Community, Wellington
Facebook Group
Engage your Community has a Facebook group.
Speakers
Rod Drury talked about Flying Pickle, a local community group near Wellington who are engaging a large interactive audience with their blog.
He also gave a demo of using Xero for online accounting. He mentioned that they’re finding community group members who are fighting over becoming treasurer, because it’s fun.
Stephen Blyth talked about how groups can use Flickr. He mentioned Oxfam and World Wide Fund for Nature.
Stephen then moved on to YouTube. He pointed out that YouTube provide the service, and make it easy for people to share the videos. They give you the code to paste in to a web page, then the video appears on your website.
Next up was podcasts — a sound file (or video) to listen to or watch on your computer, iPod or other device. For example, Collaborative Voices at Access Radio, Wellington.
Then Stephen talked about blogging. He mentioned comments, and RSS feeds, where you can ’subscribe’ to a blog and receive updates. He mentioned Volunteering Canterbury and justice.net.nz.
Hayden Sanders spoke about the Quitline blogs that help people quit smoking. He mentioned some interesting issues around moderation, defamation, spam, and ‘bad language’.
After Hayden, Stephen Gibbs from Sounz talked about their new online system for making NZ music more accessible and available to the public. They’ve now started using RSS feeds, YouTube and Facebook. He mentioned discussions they had about rights for works, and that this involved many parties such as performers, venues, copyright holders and so on.
Keep up with the Joneses
Update: thanks to Alan Royal who optimised the PDFs creating versions with smaller file sizes. Use the larger file sizes if you think you may print out the PDF, or the smaller file sizes for viewing on screen or if you’re on dial-up.
Miraz’s handout is available as a PDF (large files): Keep up with the Joneses (PDF, 8.1Mb) or zipped: Keep up with the Joneses (8.0Mb, zipped PDF).
Small files: Keep up with the Joneses (PDF, lower resolution 3.1Mb) or zipped: Keep up with the Joneses (2.7Mb, zipped lower resolution PDF)
Watch out for more reports and links over the next few days. Remember also to watch the Engage your Community website.
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Non-profit gives itself a Google makeover
Great story from the US of a non-profit organisation (”CASA Washtenaw, an organization pairing volunteers with children in the local court system”) using Google to streamline their organisation and get their word out to potential donors and grant holders.
If you would like to emulate this organisation (and why wouldn’t you) I suggest you sign-up to the Engage Your Community event (Thursday 4th September at Massey University here in Wellington) and then come along to one of my workshops at which you will be able to get hands-on experience with the very Google tools they used.
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NZ rural libraries and broadband Internet
Recently Paul Reynolds talked with Jim Mora on Radio New Zealand National about Three community projects. He mentioned Kiva, a microfinance scheme; laptops for kids in Niue through the One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) project; and a New Zealand group called Aotearoa Peoples Network:
The Aotearoa People’s Network is about providing free access to broadband internet services in public libraries so that all New Zealanders can benefit from creating, accessing and experiencing digital content.
Paul wrote in his blog:
I love talking about this project - which is tasked to deliver fast/free Internet access, plus new machines, plus some open source community story telling software, Kete, to a growing number of public libraries in New Zealand.
The current offerings are primarily rural. There is a blog, here, which tells some interesting tales. also, a map of the project libraries, here, plus the official site is here
[Via : McGOVERN ONLINE: Three community projects with Jim Mora - Radio New Zealand National.]
Paul has links to the mp3 file of his interview.
Side note: Radio NZ has many interesting technology ’slots’. Subscribe to the podcasts to stay well-informed about what’s going on with technology and the Internet.
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