Bookmark Collector

One of my favorite bookmark related sites to follow is a blog by Olga Sotomayor Sánchez named Coleccionista Chilena de Marcapáginas. She’s a librarian in Chile, and has a large, well organized collection that she puts on display at various fairs and events. She collects and trades internationally, and has been active in Mail Art events, focusing on bookmarks.

The blog is written in Spanish (and a Chilean dialect at that), but I use the AltaVista Babelfish tool to help with the translation (Marcapaginas=Bookmark). The content makes the extra effort worthwhile for me. She has a real enthusiasm for her collection which extends to actively promoting the hobby at regional events like the recent Day of the Librarian.

One of the clever things she does as an active collector is to print a set of personal bookmarks that she hands out to other collectors and to visitors at her exhibitions. These are beautiful pieces that are sort of the reverse of the business cards as bookmarks idea - bookmarks as business cards. We see it all the time to promote books, movies, and the like, but this is the first time I remember seeing it to promote a collector. Neat idea.

Her blog is filled with quite a few cool ideas, but the only other one I want to focus on here is her Mail Art event. I first came across the term in her blog, and then did a little bit of research. At some point I’ll do a more elaborate discussion (and perhaps try to organize such an event), but if you look through her archive from December of 2006, you’ll see an amazing collection of bookmarks created by artists from all over the world. That alone is worth a visit to her site.

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