They’re running a survey for commuters and it would be great if you could all fill it in! Here’s their message:

Dear all,

It has truly been a pleasure for us at LCC to partner with Book Swaps for London setting up a free, usable and safe book sharing system for all Londoners. We believe it is never enough to make literature accessible for all. So why not make this come true?

In order to design this service, four groups of students are taking different approaches in order to better understand readers’ practices – and of course this is only one part of the job. If you have two minutes to spare right now, please send us your comments and feedback:

http://svy.mk/BooksForLondon

Please feel free to forward this to your friends and family. We really appreciate your help!

All the best,
MDes Service Design students

Ian and Anthony from Book Cycle will be giving away free books and will be answering all of your questions about Book Swaps for London. So if you want to know more, pop in and say hi!

Here’s Brick Box’s write up of the event:

Tooting Tales: A Celebration of Voices and Stories, 23rd-26th Feb 2012

Stories, words, books, poems, shouts, whispers – Tooting Tales will rejoice in them all. In collaboration with the Construction Gallery, we present a veritable cavalcade of all that we love about literature including a library installation, amazing story telling, author readings, interactive word play, human scrabble & the Tooting Tales Terribly Terrific Tour of Tooting!

As night falls, the market will be open again for revelry, exploration & late-night bimbling. Expect 1-1 story telling, performances from Blackshaw’s Gormenghast: Titus Groan, spoken word-smithery, and love limericks and cabaret. Plus music from the inimitable Alphabet Soup! More information and a full programme HERE

Saturday 25th & Sunday 26th, 1-5pm, Free. Saturday 25th, 9pm-2am, £5 or £3 in advance.

You can check out more information on the Tooting Tales Facebook page. See you there!

It was so good in fact, that we’re going to do it again!

We’re heading out east this time and will be meeting up in the Straw Bale Room at Hackney City Farm on Sunday 11 March at 2pm. It would be great to meet as many people as possible who want to get involved in the project. There’s no formal agenda – it’s just a chance to chat to each other about book swapping, bounce ideas around and for anyone keen to start up their own swap to get some info and support to get started. Bring the kids and check out the animals beforehand!

What: Book Swaps for London meet up
When: 2-4pm, Sunday 11 March
Where: Straw Bale Room, Hackney City Farm, E2 8QA

We’d love to see you all there – email us at londonbookswap@gmail.com, send us a tweet (@londonbookswap) or write on our Facebook wall to let us know that you’ll be there!

The London College of Communication

Through contacts at the LSE, Dr Alison Prendiville and Cordula Friedlander at the LCC are using the Book Swaps for London campaign as a case study for their course on Service Design Innovation. Between now and April, 11 of their students will be researching how London’s tube and train transport works as well as other book-swapping schemes worldwide. They are then going to be proto-typing book swaps in certain areas of the transport system. By April, they will have worked out how best to design book swaps to make them as usable, efficient, and safe as possible for everyone who uses the train and the tube in London. The students are incredibly on to it, and we’re so very lucky to be getting their help for this project.

Read International

If you haven’t heard of Read International, go to their website right now. Now. They’re an absolutely fantastic charity which sends text books to schools in Tanzania and Uganda, to help hundreds of thousands of children to get an education. Since 2004, they’ve shipped over 1 million books to East Africa – wow! Read International also gets thousands of books donated to them that they are unable to send to Africa because they’re not suitable. They’re very happy for us to use some of these for our book swaps; in exchange we’ll promote them on our swaps as well. They also have a network of university-based volunteers, book bins and warehouses that we will hopefully be using as well.

Bookcrossing

Bookcrossing is the granddaddy of book sharing. Begun in 2001 in the USA, they help millions of people across the world to swap books with the help of some really nifty labels and the ability to track where they end up as well. We spoke with Bookcrossing’s founder, Bruce Pedersen last week, and he’s very keen to get involved with our campaign with the possibility of using book swaps in tube and train stations as areas where people can also leave their Bookcrossing books. It’s going to be great!

Book Cycle

Book Cycle is a charity based in the South of England which collects unwanted books and then gives them away in their ‘shops’ in Exeter and Brighton. They help people to set up book swaps in pubs, cafes, restaurants, hotels and Doctor’s surgeries. We’re hoping to use some of their volunteers and massive amounts of expertise for our London-based book swaps. They also do some really, really, cool stuff with trees.

Healthy Planet – Books for Free

Founded by Londoner Shaylesh Patel, Healthy Planet does a whole bunch of great stuff, from providing free spaces for community groups in unused office spaces, to having ‘stores’ where you can grab Books for Free. They’ve been giving us lots of advice, and have access to volunteers, books and storage spaces across London. Check ‘em out.

All these organisations and people are amazing – please have a look at their sites and support them if you can!

We’re also chatting to some very talented design students about shaping the look and feel of book swaps in London. We hope to be able to share details of this at the meet up on the 31st.