Bookcrossing - another way to recycle your books

[Joy H., Group Founder]

NOTE: THIS MESSAGE IS PART OF A CONVERSATION WHICH STARTED IN A GENERAL THREAD HERE. I THOUGHT IT WOULD BE GOOD TO START A SEPARATE TOPIC ABOUT IT.
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Katherine wrote (on 10/24/10): "Today I joined Book Crossings, an international organization that encourages reading by registering books, releasing them into the wild, and tracking them in their travels. There are over three hundred thousand members in the United States, with twenty-seven in Glens Falls and thirteen in Lake George.
I released a book this afternoon at Price Chopper by leaving it in a shopping cart. Maybe the person who picks it up will go on line to Book Crossings so I can track the book.
It's quite a concept. Hope it works for me. "

Katherine, I went to the bookcrossing webpage for more information, but it requires registration.
http://www.bookcrossing.com/

So I went to Wiki and found an explanation:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bookcros...
Excerpts:
"BookCrossing ... is defined as 'the practice of leaving a book in a public place to be picked up and read by others, who then do likewise.'"
...
"Ron Hornbaker conceived the idea for what is now known as BookCrossing in March 2001. About four weeks later, on April 17, he launched the website, which has expanded and grown throughout the world."

Another website says:
"Read and release your books into the wild! Tag your used books with a unique tracking number, then follow their travels through the world at BookCrossing, ...
FROM: http://www.emtags.com/site/www.bookcr...

Here's another:
"Better World Books Teams Up with BookCrossing.com:
BookCrossing.com, the world's largest free book club is anonymous and safe and seeks to make the whole world a library. Winning 2 Webby Awards (the Oscars of the Internet) in 2005 for the "Best Community" and "Best Social Networking" site on the web, BookCrossing boasts an ever-growing membership of over 750,000 passionate readers and receives about 25 million hits a month with its membership having "registered and released" almost 5.5 million books in 160 countries." ... ""Better World Books, like BookCrossing, offers new life to books through innovative alternatives to recycling."
FROM: http://www.betterworldbooks.com/custo...

I did find a website which explains about labels:
It says:
"Labelling your books with a unique BookCrossing ID number (BCID) is vital to successful BookCrossing. The BCID you get for each book you register here will stay with the book for the rest of its natural life, which of course is probably longer than you or any of us will live. Anytime during that long, long future ahead of us that someone reads the book, then comes to www.bookcrossing.com and enters that BCID, they will be able to see the complete journal history of the book and make a new journal entry of their own. Cool, huh?"
FROM: http://www.bookcrossing.com/labels

Yes, pretty cool! Thanks, Katherine!