Category: READ & DISCOVER

All book/library/technologies-related news that we think are intersting to share here!

Bookstore recycling,​ used books all around!

Posted on by Team Blookup

With World Book Day coming the day after tomorrow, there’s something that has to be said! Cultivating oneself is often expensive. Once you start stacking books in your arms, prices can add up very quickly without you noticing it until the very end!

Even if choosing the pocket format can help, accessing the book market at full price sadly isn’t for everyone. This is where the used books market comes in!

Recycle Bookstore is one of many actors of this market today, but started proposing used books over 40 years ago (1962)! Its concept is to sell thousands of books at low prices, from many different universes and about a lot of topics: Art, Science-Fiction, History, Science, classic literature, gardening…

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Campbell’s kid section (above) and San Jose’s Art, History and Photography section (below)

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The books proposed at the Bookstore  are donated or traded, so there’s always new ones to chose from.

Two bookstores are open, one in San Jose and one in Campbell (both in California), and both are pretty well-rated on Yelp! Of course, they propose different books on certain topics, but that’s one of the things that make those shops special!

What are the other things, will you ask?

Well, they also propose some DVDs and CDs, rare, signed or limited-edition books, friendly staff and… Cats.

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Those cuties aren’t for sale, but you can enjoy their company while you wander around and browse the shelves looking for your next literature treasure!

So if you happen to drop by San Jose or Campbell, and if you’re not allergic to cat fur, don’t forget to check out those awesome book stores!

The Cincinnati’s Book Fountain in Ohio

Posted on by Team Blookup

It’s getting cold and it’s not really the time to talk about fresh water anymore.

But some of you may be waiting for one thing !  Summer, and its 36 ° C in the shade! So before talking about snow, christmas trees and winter wind, we’ll do one last little favor to summer fans by making you do a small tour of the Municipal Library of Cincinnati!

Contrary to what its name indicates, Cincinnati is not located in Italy (However, the name is Italian, in hommage to the Roman political figure Cincinnatus). But in the United States, in the state of Ohio.

There are many beautiful things to see in Cincinnati but today we will stop at this beautiful fountain, just in front of the Municipal Library !

Book Fountain Cincinnati Public Library
Photo credit: Jean-François Schmitz

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Soberly named “Book Fountain”, this monument is actually a sculpture of books made of concrete covered with fired clay ! All stacked on each other, through which water flows as would a waterfall do. According to the artist-sculptor Michael Frasca, the flow of water through the books represents the free flow of ideas and information through writing and literature.

Very popular with tourists and students from frequently pose or sit near it. The fountain is also a memorial dedicated to Amelia Valerio Weinberg. She  died in 1982 and who bequeathed money in order to build a fountain for the Municipal Library !  Her wish finally came true 8 years later, and in the best way possible!

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Hemmeling Rom, the library in the woods…

Posted on by Team Blookup

Last year we had you discover Newmarket’s mobile library. But reading in town, even in a park, was still a little bit too… Déjà vu, right?

So, you like to read but you can’t stand the metro alarms, the screeching of the tramway rails or being shaked onthe bus?

Despite all the magic contained in your book, despite all the nice turns of phrase, you can’t get into it as you are forced to check for your next stop or detach your hand off the bar to which you were hanging in order to turn your page while you are suffocating, standing between two very close neighboors?

Forget the stress and constant distractions with this library of dreams! Secret Library Hemmelig Rom exterior view

Designed by the americans of Studio Padron ! The “Hemmeling Rom” (or “Secret Chamber” in Norwegian) is a cabin of 200 squared meters entirely made of oak, furnished with a bed, a chair, a desk and a wood-burning stove.  Everything you need to curl, warm, comfortable, with a good book in hand and plenty of others lining on the walls all around!

Secret Library Hemmelig Rom stove and bed

For those who love solitude and calm, the joy is complete as the library is completely isolated !  Lost somewhere in the woods of the state of New York, United States. It’s an essential travel stop for true books and new experiences lovers!

Secret Llibrary Hemmelig Rom windows and shelves

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Article source – photos credits : Jason Koxvold

Books and Progress: Discover the National Library of France!

Posted on by Team Blookup

Okay, we saw great books, that’s good. But when large books are not buildings themselves, we must put them in large libraries, right?

The National Library of France (“Bibliothèque Pierre Mendes France” or “BNF”), in Paris, seems to be the right place to house collections gathering nearly 14 million books and prints, and increasing  approximately of 670,000 documents per year!

This staggering number is divided over two locations: The historic Richelieu library, on Vivienne Street, and the François Mitterrand library, near the Seine docks.

National Library of Paris

 4 buildings like this, designed by architect Dominique Perrault, store millions of valuable documents on the east side of Paris.

photo credit: Inathèque

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These collections include several million periodicals, about 250,000 manuscripts, 2,500 vellum and 10,000 medieval manuscripts (making it the largest library in the world for this kind of documents), maps, prints, photographs, scores, coins, medals, audio, video, multimedia or digital (16.5 billion URLs), objects and artefacts, costumes, scenery …
The BNF is also increasingly known for its digital library, Gallica, which provides access to the reproduction of more than 3.4 million documents in texts, images or sounds in order to save documents that were too damaged to be consulted or which have to be saved in emergency because their data were about to be lost forever.

At the Tolbiac library, the reading rooms are located on the ground floor. When a reader wants a book, he must introduce his library card into an electronic reader, choose the book he wants and order it. The book is delivered about half an hour later, after the library staff working on the upper floors put the ordered books in automated guided vehicles and sent them to their future readers.

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The reading rooms of the BNF: Left, the Oval Room of the Richelieu site; On the right, the Ground Garden Site Tolbiac.

photos credits: Vincent Desjardins

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We are sur all this makes you want to read! But to avoid dizziness, it’s best to start with your holiday memories turned into a blook!

3D printing: We love printing your hikes!

Posted on by Team Blookup

Are you an avid mountain hiker or a more casual one? Either way, you cross on foot or bike the most beautiful reliefs and you want to keep an original souvenir of your prowess?

Turning your best hikes into a 3D map is what the Spanish startup Nice Trails offers you. And we share the discovery with you this week!

This startup offers a revolutionnary solution to print a 3D model of a moutain excursion that you have done. All accompanied with nice reliefs that show you the altitude you have climbed as well as the achievements you have accomplished!

The idea came from the founder who thought that the path shown on a paper map does not convey well the remarkable character of physical prowess and exertion.

Book Hiking 3D Relief

This is much better than a Michelin map!

How does it work?

You send the GPS coordinates of your hike to the web platform, preview the 3D object representing your path – drawned in a bright red line along the relief you walked. Then you confirm your order to send it to a 3D printer. 

The object arrives at home only a few days later. It’s now up to you to use it as a paperweight, to frame it and hang it on a wall, or leave it on the living room coffee table like a trophy!

Nice Trails features 3 diferent print sizes and price ranges from 99 to 249€ (around $111,48 to $280,40). A good way to immortalize the hikes of your life, just like BlookUp allows you to re-materialize your digital content in a real paper book. It’s so amazing to see how the concrete objects that you can hold in your hands still have a bright future ahead of them!

A customised book with the name of your child!

Posted on by Team Blookup

We’ve found the perfect gift for a mum-to-be or for little readers… A book that you can customise with the name of your child! A very creative concept, because the story inside the book adapts to the name you choose.

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The idea is simple: it’s the story of a little boy or a little girl (as you wish) that has lost his/her name. Little by little, the child will find one by one the letter of his name and live some magical adventures at the same time. Every character that the child met will give him the first letter of his name… Louis will first meet a lion, and Chloe a chameleon!

What do you think about this concept, pretty amazing don’t you think? To know more about the “Lost My Name” project, it’s this way!

And if you want to create a customised book to offer a wonderful gift to your child, you can also print your family blog into a book or your most beautiful Instagram pictures with BlookUp 🙂

A barbecue kit: A book that turns into one!

Posted on by Team Blookup

If you like making barbecue during the weekend and have a good time with your friends, you might enjoy this concept!

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Tramontina, a brazilian brand for kitchen ustensils and the advertising agency JWT have imagined a project more than unique… The concept is simple: a book dedicated to barbecues. What’s the originality of that? Well, it’s not just any book. “The Bible of Barbecue” is a book where each page and the cover turn into a tool or an ingredient for the recipe!

For example, the first page is made of coal and you will have to break it to start your fire, the next one is paper to light it up and so on. As you go along, pages have new functions: sharpen your knife, make an apron, add salt and pepper… The cover is more solid and uses as a cutting board. Smart, don’t you think?

Each chapter correspond to a step: first light the fire, then cook and finally serve your dish!

At the end of the barbecue recipe book  you won’t have any pages left, but your belly will be full! What do you think about this concept?

You book printed on demand with your lunch

Posted on by Team Blookup

A new restaurant has opened in Paris: ZA.

It’s actually a “literary cafeteria” where anyone can come, order food . As well as order a book that’s printed on demand!

An original concept that spoke to our hearts here at BlookUp, we know about printing book on demand from one copy!

Here, you can order a book that exists already (and not customize your own book like we offer) from a catalogue that is about 2000 titles.

Your meal is being prepared at the same time as the book you’ve chosen is printed, and you can then feed your body and your mind in one single place!

Printing a 400 pages book takes 7 minutes, so you can enjoy your break.

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Designed by Philippe Starck, and with 328 seats and its terrace, ZA is ZE place to be for all book lovers! Bonus!  You can even download the application on your smartphone to see the menu and pay online thanks to the WIFI service.

We love the concept! What do you think about this “literary cafeteria”?

Mother Book : a book that grows with the belly of the future mom !

Posted on by wsb

We’ve just found the perfect gift for your pregnant best friend : a book that lasts 9 months, and evolves at the same time than the future mom’s body. Let us introduce : the Mother Book :

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This great idea was imagined and created by the Kishokai obstetric department in Japan, and the advertising agency Dentsu. The main idea is pretty simple : the pregnancy and expectation of a child are very important moments in one’s life, especially for mothers. Why not offer them an object that would evolve with their bodies, giving advices about the child and where they could write all their thoughts ?

Each page represents a week of pregnancy : Mother Book contains 40 beautifully designed pages, with a woman’s chest in 3D that grows in the course of the reading. On every page there is a unique design, that helps understand the status of the baby, but also several blank spaces for the moms to write their feelings, and be able to read them later ! You’re free to use it as you want.

A very nice gift to offer to your kid later : the full summary of his life inside the maternal womb. Here at BlookUp we totally love this idea ! The first book of your child’s life, to be completed later by many more, for example by printing the book of your blog to transpose the first years of his life… 

Booxup : share your books with others !

Posted on by wsb

Trades of services between private individuals are more and more practiced : carpooling, couch surfing,… well, now it is also true for books ! Indeed, a very new app has been created a few months ago. Its name is Booxup.

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Booxup is an app which was made for people who want to share their books with others. You just have to submit on the website to be apart of the community. Then, you can add books you want to share on your virtual library so that the other members can see it and choose it if they want to. You can also seek a book you would love among the couple of libraries around you. Booxup works with the geolocalisation, so you will only see libraries close to you. You can also follow members to know when they add a new book on the app.

Booxup was made to let people discover new books and share their owns. This is also a good way to meet people who love the same thing than you : reading. Maybe you should turn your blog into a book and share it on the app ? 🙂

 

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