No Book Left Behind

By Avraham Roos

Avraham Roos is a Methodology and English Proficiency lecturer at Herzog Academic College and Levinsky College.

The ETAI (and ETNI) community has proven itself to be full of caring and sharing teachers. Don’t we English teachers all have at least one book at home we would gladly give to someone else? At this year’s summer ETAI conference, bring a book, look for the Bookcrossing.com corner and put Israel on the Bookcrossing map while you enjoy some good reads and follow your globe-trotting books.

Would you like to get free books? Do you have books at home you don’t need? Would you like to send those books on a journey around the world? Then try Bookcrossing!

Bookcrossing is surprisingly simple: Leave a book anywhere in a public place for others to find. The finder reads the book, re-releases it in another place for the next person to find, and the cycle repeats. You, and any of its future finders (called journalers) can track the journey of the book using the Bookcrossing website.

So how does it work? Well, first go to the Bookcrossing website: www.bookcrossing.com and sign up (for free). The only thing you need is to supply a username, e-mail and password of your choosing. As soon as you are logged on to the Bookcrossing site, you can go hunting for books (Click on “Books & People”, then “Go Hunting”) and/or start populating your bookshelf.

Your next step will be to let the world know where you put your book(s) and how to track them. To do this, you will need to download and print out your FREE book labels from the website. To find these, click on the tab, “Store” and then “Book Labels” in the drop-down menu. Scroll down to the “Free Downloadable Label Files” and download the 10 pre-numbered labels. Print these out, cut them up and glue them into your books. Now you can release them by going to “Home” > “Release Book”. You will be asked for the BCID which is the Book Crossing ID number which is on the label that you printed out. Fill in the release information and put the book in the designated place.

When someone ‘finds’ your book, they will go to the Bookcrossing.com website and submit the unique code for this book (on the label you pasted inside). Next time you are on the website, you will see that your book has been found and where it is now. The finder will read the book, re-release it in another place and inform the website of its new place. In this way, you and any of its future finders can track the journey of the book.

So what about the ETAI conference?

I would like to suggest we all make an effort to become Bookcrossing members, print out labels, stick these in some books and bring the books to the upcoming ETAI conference in Jerusalem on July 7 & 8. There will be a special Bookcrossing corner where you can leave your books for others to find and take any of the books you want. Let’s make that the official opening of a joint effort to get Israel into Bookcrossing’s Top Ten countries!