The BookMooch Journal Project
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What is This About?
The BookMooch Journal Project was born out of a brainstorm I had after someone at BookMooch mentioned the ‘1000 Journals’ in a posting on the forum. Intrigued, I looked it up on the web and was struck by the sheer genius of a collection of traveling journals, with thousands of participants around the world adding art to a journal and passing it on to another journaler. Reading further, I learned that because of the small number of journals in relation to the huge potential pool of participants worldwide, there just wasn’t a very good chance of getting to participate. As the 1000 journals website says: “Unfortunately, you’ve got a better chance of winning the lottery than of getting a hold of a journal.” I decided that BookMooch, with it’s thousands of book-loving members, created an ideal pool of limited participants to engage in a small-scale art-journaling project. Thus was born “The BookMooch Journal Project”
--Kenneth Samson, originator of BookMooch Journal Project
The rules are simple: Begin one or more BookMooch-only journals, created out of a hardcover blank journal, a used hardcover book, or a sturdy softcover book, and create a theme and name for your journal. After we’ve made the first art entry into your journal, set it loose into the BookMooch world by creating a unique BookMooch page for it by using the page at:
http://bookmooch.com/m/add_manually
When adding a new journal to the system, make sure to add the word “BMJournal” to the title field along with your journal’s unique name, so others can search for and find the available BookMooch Journals to mooch or add to their wishlists.
Each person that mooches a journal adds their art entry, and within two weeks re-posts it into the BookMooch system to be mooched by another member, who adds their art entry to the journal and again adds it back to BookMooch for the next moocher, and so on.
Use the description field when adding your journal to the system to explain what you’d like done to the journal. Also, be sure to add your BookMooch ID to the description so participants may contact you. When a journal is ‘full’ it will then be returned to the owner by emailing them for a shipping address.
Best of all - you don’t have to win the lottery to get a BookMooch Journal. The cost of participation is exactly the same as if you were mooching a regular book, but you would not own the journal - rather, mooching it is committing yourself to adding your artistic entry into it and releasing it back with-in two weeks to be mooched again by another participant. The owner of the journal retains ownership and gets it back when the journal is full.
BMJournalers Discussion List
BMJournaler Becky Short has started a discussion list for everyone interested in chatting about the BMJournal Project at BookMooch.
Here’s the join link:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/BMJournalers/
The group's database contains a comprehensive listing of all BookMooch Journals that have been released.
Here is Becky’s welcome letter for the list:
This group is for all members of the book trading site, http://bookmooch.com/, who are participating in or are interested in participating in the BMJournal Project. You can find out all about the BMJournal Project here: http://bookmoochjournals.com/. This group combines our love of books with our love of art and writing as we create and trade journals of art and writing. To participate in this group you need to join the Bookmooch community (free at the site) and join this group (free through Yahoo). Art and journaling support and encouragement will abound here with lots of opportunities to share techniques, custom essays, ideas, helpful books and web sites, artist/writer block rants … anything relating to the BMJournal project. Please come have fun with us - and play nice! (No flaming will be tolerated - it gives me indigestion and a rash and I will put anyone guilty of flaming on “moderated” status in a heartbeat - just so you know.)
Rena Rossner is the BMJournalers Yahoo group Moderator.
http://bookmooch.com/m/bio/renarossner
Becky Short is the originator of the BMJournalers Yahoo group.
http://bookmooch.com/m/inventory/writeart
BMJournalers Flickr Group
BMJournaler Clair Rigby has started a Flickr Group where journalers can share images of their work. This is a public group but with restricted membership (i.e. people need to ask to join and requests are filtered so that only BM members are joining.)
The group can be found at:
http://www.flickr.com/groups/thebookmoochjournalproject/
For those of you that haven't heard of, or joined, Flickr yet - come on and join the party. It's free and all you need to join is a Yahoo account. (Happily, you should all have one already!) If anyone needs any help joining, accessing the page, uploading photos, etc, please ask Clair.
Clair Rigby is the Admin for the Flickr Group.
http://bookmooch.com/m/bio/clair_rigby
Help Publicize the Project!
Participating journal moochers -
I wrote the short letter below for us to use in promoting both bookmooch and the journal project. I’d like to get the word out to people who might join bookmooch in order to do the journals. This is a win-win arrangement - we’ll end up not only with many more bookmooch members, we’ll also see many new book offerings as well as new journals to participate in.
Here’s where you come in - if you are like me, you are a not only a member of this forum, you are a member of many other online communities as well. Whether it is forums, email discussion lists, journaling projects, ATC trading sites, altered books collectives, or other artistic projects, this is a chance to spread the word about the BookMooch Journal Project - it’s simplicity and structure, and ease of joining, adding and obtaining traveling art journals.
Feel free to post this letter anywhere you think it will attract booklovers and art lovers.
thanks, ken
Here’s the letter to use
Come join the BookMooch Journal Project, a traveling art journals project!
This is a brand new undertaking, complete with its own blog and a hosting system to track the journals! First, join http://www.bookmooch.com which is a book trading site. There is no cost to join. The concept behind bookmooch is to trade books you no longer want with others. For every ten books you add to the system, you get one point. with that point, you can get a free book of your choice. We’ve utilized this system for it’s sheer simplicity. Rather than mooching just books, you may use your points to mooch traveling art journals!
Search for journals using this keyword: BMJournal
If no journals are presently available, you can search for ‘unavailable’ titles, and then add the ones that interest you to your wishlist. Every time one of the journals becomes available again, you can mooch it!
Click to see images of some of the journals.
People who have obtained a journal or released a journal can leave a note in the comments associated with that specific journal.
Come join us for the journey! After all, getting a journal from 1000 Journals is harder than winning the lottery! Bookmooch journals are much easier to obtain, because it is strictly limited to BookMooch members.
Thanks for participating, from the folks at The BookMooch Journal Project
Frequently Asked Questions
For more Q&A, see the FAQ at bookmoochjournals.com - http://bookmoochjournals.com/faq/
Q: I want to start my own journal and release it into the BookMooch world. What do I do?
A: Decide on a theme and name for your journal. Your journal's name should be unique. Then create a BookMooch page for it using this link:
http://bookmooch.com/m/add_manually
You'll see a form. The following fields are important:
Author: This field can say something like "BMJournalers" or "BookMoochers." Or it can say your name.
Title: Please start your title with BMJournal and follow that with your journal's unique name. Adding BMJournal at the beginning of your title will help your journal show up in search results.
Description: Use the description field when adding your journal to the system to explain your topic or theme and what you’d like done to the journal. Also, be sure to add your BookMooch ID to the description so participants may contact you.
Q: I have an idea for a new journal but I'm not sure if there is already a journal circulating with the same theme or topic. How can I find out?
A: One way to tell is to go to the blog and search for a key word. For example, if you search using the word "fairy," you'll see several results. This does not mean you can't duplicate a theme or topic. The journal will ultimately reside with the person who started it and there are new journalers joining the project, too. So it's okay to start a journal with a similar theme. However, your journal's name should be unique. Give it a different name so it doesn't get confused with another journal.
Q: I've received a journal, added my entry and am now ready to pass it to someone else. How do I add the journal back into circulation?
A: You want to re-list the journal into the BookMooch system using the original entry created by the journal's owner.
There are several ways to relist journals on their original page.
Go to Member Home, Books Received, find the record of you having mooched and received the journal, click on the link for the journal and use the "Give My Copy" button. This sends out a message to folks who have the journal wishlisted.
Another way to find it is to go to Advanced Search. In the "Search for these words:" box, type BMJournal. Before you hit the search button, go down to the button called "Search wishlists." Use the drop-down to select "Yes, search all books." Then click on "Search." This will give you a results list of all the books with BMJournal in the title. (Note some journals are listed BM Journal with the space, so you can try it that way, too.) Find the journal entry and use the "Give my copy" button to add it to your inventory.
A third way to find the original page: Go to the BM Journal Project blog at http://bookmoochjournals.com/ In the search box, type enough details from the title to find the journal. In the journal's description, click on the link that takes you to the entry on BookMooch. Use the "Give my copy" button.
