tracking and exchanging physical texts

I’m looking for more sites like these. Any suggestions?

Update: I suppose I should provide a little more context. My interest in sites and communities like these comes from the fact that I have just the faintest inkling of an idea for an article or research project about readers & reading and writers & writing. Bookcrossing, for example, is a site that allows you to “release” your books “into the wild” by leaving them at a bus stop, in a restaurant, in a classroom, or in any public space, having first “tagged” them by affixing a sticker to them with the web address for Bookcrossing and a unique serial number for that particular book. Before releasing, you register the book on the site, and then anyone who picks up the book can go to the website, report having found it, and write their impressions before releasing it again and allowing another reader to find it. The cycle would repeat itself indefinitely, in theory. I’ve known about the site for almost a year, and I have actually found a book that had been released: it was a Phillip K. Dick novel, I believe. I gave it to a friend who expressed interest, but I don’t think he ever recorded having found it.

Anyway, back to my interest: If there are other sites like these, I’d like to know about them. A possible research project might be to conduct a survey of the reading experience of the community members (or “site registrants”), since their contact information is retrievable.

But like I said, I have just the faintest inkling of an idea. Other research threads are taking priority right now, but for the future…

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2 thoughts on “tracking and exchanging physical texts

  1. Yeah, that’s a great site: tracking money as it travels from pocket to pocket. If their stats are to be believed, they are amazing: “We now have 1,939,933 users who have entered 33,637,375 bills, totaling $194,418,202 worth of U.S. currency!”
    In an update to my original post, I’ve clarified somewhat my interest and my original query.

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