I love bookstores. Particularly used bookstores and the heady scent of old paper, binding and knowledge. In fact, a few weeks ago Nialle Sylvan at the Haunted Bookshop in Iowa City gave me the honor of perusing a book published in 1798. I opened the book and thought, "I could be the first person to read this particular page in over a century. Maybe longer." For a fellow with a Bachelor's in History and love for all things books and narrative, it was a glorious moment.
What I really love, though, is coming across used books with handwritten messages, old receipts, notecards, and other archeological evidence of past ownership. At that moment, the book takes on another life: the deeper meaning of what the book meant to previous readers. For example, what if they left a bookmark? Why did they stop at that point in the book? Or gift messages: why did the reader give the book away? Or grocery lists: did they forget the milk?
Thus, several years ago I got this fool idea in my head to document these finds, but nothing came of it since I didn't think anyone else would be interested. But, then came along sites such as Tumblr and Pinterest where people share all sorts of images to receptive audiences. That, and I stumbled across this gem of a notecard inside a book.
So, I threw together a quick proof-of-concept site back in November, showed it to Nialle (who approved), but left it fallow due to grad school (priorities, priorities). But, now that I've graduated and have a little more time to actually consider creative endeavors, I figured I'd dust the concept off and see what you think:
http://www.literaphemera.com/
Anyways, back to the "crowdsourcing" bit in the article title. I'm thinking big: I want to collect images from used bookstores around the U.S.--hell, the world--and I figured the best way was to solicit images. The risk, of course, is being deluged by submissions. But creativity requires effort, does it not? (and bandwidth, for that matter... but never mind that for now).
Also, I'm debating whether to leave this on Typepad or to move it to Tumblr. On one hand, I know my way around Typepad; on the other hand, Tumblr seems better for sharing works of this nature.
In short, what do you think of the idea, and do you have and recommendations? Drop me a line in the comments below or at james@jdfielder.com
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