Posts It would be a really, really inspired idea to take discarded library books to the local train station during Library Week and give them to local commuters to read on their journey.
It was genius, however, for the team at Rosanna Library in Melbourne to do some guerrilla indoctrination of Ranganathan’s First Law: “Books are for use” . They added to each item a Bookcrossing tag, so that commuters could register the book on the website and track its progress around the world as they gave it away to the next reader.
Chris MacKenzie, CEO of Yarra Plenty Regional Library ( one of the most innovative public library systems in Australia ) tells the story further in her blog, Bookcrossing at Rosanna Railway Station .
Andrea, the Branch Manager at Rosanna sent me this email on Friday:
“We have just finished a very successful Library Week activity at Rosanna railway station.
We set up a table at the station for four mornings this week between 8am and 10am. Joyce handed out library publicity and offered commuters a free withdrawn book – adult fiction or paperback – each one with a BookCrossing tag and a registration number.
The idea is that readers register their title on the BookCrossing website then read it and pass it on to a friend or leave it somewhere to be picked up by the next reader, who also registers on the website. The website tracks the book’s progress around Melbourne or Australia or even overseas and we can also check out the readers’ comments about the books (and the “friendly librarian at Rosanna station”).
The feedback from both commuters and Connex staff has been extremely positive – Connex have asked if we can do this again during the next school holidays but some commuters have already asked if we could do this once a week.
Commuters were happy – not just to get something for free but they were intrigued by the BookCrossing idea and pleasantly surprised to see friendly library staff out and about early on a cold morning at the station. Perhaps having a book to read on the train and switch off was also a more inviting prospect than reading the daily news. We have been checking the website and it appears that many commuters have logged on to BookCrossing as soon as they got to work and registered.”
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