peer-to-peer library sites in action

Libraries take a collective pool of money and provide a collective pool of books to the community, with the library as the nexus - check in, check out, check in, repeat.

Lots of people, apparently in the sway of socialistic ideals (note: humour), are quite happy to give away their books when they're done with them, or swap books.

Should the library be enabling this?  I can't see why not.

digg dug up http://whatsonmybookshelf.com/

the main value being in the comments, which pointed out the many many already well-established swap or giveaway sites

Wikipedia - Book Swap lists some

Here are all the ones I found, some more book-specific than others

• http://www.titletrader.com/
• http://www.paperbackswap.com/
• http://lala.com/ (CDs)
• http://www.peerflix.com/ (DVDs)
• http://www.barterbee.com/ (movies, music, games)
• http://www.sf-books.com/
• http://www.bookcrossing.com/
• http://www.tauschticket.de/ (in German)
• http://www.readitswapit.co.uk/
• http://www.freecycle.org/

So all of you who are planning to get rich off the Long Tail may have to contend with the fact that there is a Long Tail of people with a Long Tail of stuff that they are quite happy to circulate without any money changing hands whatsoever.

Comments

[Kevin Schmidt]

Hello there,

I just wanted to inform you, that there is annother opportunity to exchange your media online.
On www.hitflip.de it is possible to barter a dvd with an audiobook for example. This is impossible on
tauschticket, which gives hitflip a big advantage.