Bookmark Collector

Happy New Year everyone!

Goodbye 2008

As I look back on the past year, two bookmark related items stand out as personal highlights for 2008. First, are the Bookmark Bookmarks posts that I’ve been able to publish every week. It’s been wonderful to see the prized bookmarks that other collectors have posted; the hand-crafted bookmarks made by talented artisans, for themselves, as gifts, or for sale; the interesting range of competitions put on for bookmark designers; and the latest bookmark related news and articles. I’m happy to be finding all of these wonderful tidbits, and I’m really happy that I’ve been getting the posts out on a (fairly) consistent basis.

The second bookmark related highlight for me this year has been meeting other collectors: face to face and collection to collection. Although bookmark collecting is a globally active hobby, and other collectors are really only an email, facebook post, or group message away, sitting across from another collector as we “ooh” and “aah” over each other’s collections is uniquely satisfying. I had the good fortune of meeting several times with Lauren Roberts of BiblioBuffet fame – who lives in my home town. And we also met with Laine Farley this last year, which meant that for a few hours we had a real bookmark collectors meeting. That was wonderful.

Hello 2009

So now I’m looking forward to 2009, and thinking about this opportunity to make some changes. I have a healthy skepticism about New Year’s resolutions, but I also appreciate this season of renewal.

And so I see two changes that I’d like to make in the next year which will build on accomplishments of the last. First, I’d like to be posting more than once a week. I believe the current Bookmark Bookmarks schedule makes sense. Once a week provides a good balance of content and frequency. Inspired by all the posts I find from other collectors, I’d also like to be posting more of my collection, at least once a week. There are also collectors’ issues that I’d like to be discussing, some specific to bookmark collectors, others to ephemera collectors, and some issues that are universal to anyone with the collector’s gene.

My second goal for the new year is to spend a bit more time with the bookmark collector’s community. I’ve seen various attempts at collector’s forums, and I’ve mainly been a passive observer (“lurker” being the common term). I’ll be supporting these other groups on the inter-webs, so look for my name and feel free to say “hi”. I’ve seen how participating with a group of fellow collectors makes this whole experience much more rewarding. And maybe someday we’ll all be able to gather a bit more frequently to share our collections.

So those are my reflective thoughts on a day that seems insistent on such things. I wish you all well in this new year, and I hope you find some truely wonderful treasures for your collections!