On April 12th , volunteer groups from school of business of our university conducted an activity entitled “Book-crossing, elegance far overflows” out of campus after the warming-up. This activity was held in Xiangtan Yuhu Park, Baishi Park, Pearl garden, Datong world respectively. It lasted from April 12th to April 28th.
Purpose: Transfer knowledge and pass love
“Book-crossing”was one of specific volunteer activities. The distinct characteristic for this year was to make it involved with the public. It was the first time that the students had such an opportunity to implement this activity out of campus." said JieShao, one volunteer from school of business.
Volunteer groups had made a full preparation and collected about 3000 used books from students’ dormitory, city library and second-hand bookstores before this activity began on April 10.
“Uncles and aunts, please see whether there are some books satisfying your taste. This book-crossing activity aims for the public for free, you can borrow books from us and donate your idle books to us if you like.” Director of volunteer group in Baishi park Wang Zhuanghao patiently introduced this activity to the passers-by. “The aim of our public activity is to transfer knowledge and pass love but nothing”, he added.
Relevant persons in charge also explained that “Book-crossing, elegant far overflowing” activities, to a certain extent, is designed to create sound learning atmosphere, improving people's culture and education level as well as Xiangtan people’s well-being. This activity received a positive response from citizens, pushing forward the establishment of a learning society and the construction of “knowledge project”. Currently, this activity has become the spot light of whole society, including Xiangtan Evening News, Xiangtan TV Broadcast and other medium.
Scene: Full of praise from the public floods neoteric activities
The board-made “school gate” was neatly shelved more than ten novels and almost twenty magazines. Next to it was a piece of registration form and a pen for borrowers to register their personal information. A notice called Floating Friends was attached to it, reading the rules. This activity aimed to encourage people to borrow books.
“I like reading books in my spare time and often go to city library. This is the first time I have ever seen such an activity for us to borrow books, I think it is creative.” Miss Liu’s eyes were attached to our cute bookstore, so she picked out a book called “The Depth of Happiness” from other books. After reading, she solemnly registered her information on the clipboard.
Citizen Chen was very delighted after learning our activity’s purpose. He said this activity was really a public one, which could encourage more young people to read more and be in line with our times. Books make us knowledgeable and serve us better. Chen said he would recommend his company to be in collaboration with our university in the future if there was an opportunity. In this way could we try our best to hold this activity better, and made it more influential.
Some residents frankly told us that this activity remained some problems to be tackled. “The bookstore is too small to hold more books. He recommended us to make our bookstore larger so that more books can be shelved on it for people to read. ” Mr. Yang, one of the book lovers reflected this problem to the volunteers.
Doubts: Can you open the bookstore with honesty and trust?
We found some citizens had some doubts about our activity from their praise and curious eyes. The doubts were as follows: If borrowers don't return books, what will you do? Damage books? Destroy the bookstore?
Director of volunteer groups Li Yanan responded to the public: “In order to ensure getting back the borrowed books and avoid any loss, we have employed a mobile phone software called ‘scan number’ to tackle this problem.”
Volunteers have already logged information of each book in the database ahead of time, which could generate certain specific codes. We could know the detailed information of each book, including its borrower and checking number through this code.
In addition, volunteer groups reached consensus with regional administrators, whose staffs will patrol this area regularly to guard our bookstore.
They will timely supply books to make sure the sufficiency of books and repair the bookstore once it gets damage, which could guarantee the success of the book-crossing activities.
Books-crossing welcomed its first book donator Jiang Xinya who was a little girl who picked up a book called Secret Intelligence 200 Figures. She shyly asked a volunteer around her, “Elder sister, can I put my book back to the book case?” At that time,her father also showed strong interest in our activity. This little girl along with her father selected her favorite book from the bookshelf and promised to return it back on time.
(Translated by Zheng Zaoxing)