Bookplates, Blogs, and Bookplate Blog Books

It's a rainy spring Sunday here, so no better time than to catch up on the blog and share a bunch of interesting things I've come across this past week.

If you're just looking for ideas, or perhaps resources even, to pursue creating your own bookplate then I recommend you consider attending the upcoming Canadian Bookbinders and Book Artist's Guild annual book arts fair in Toronto this June.  Dozens of artists, designers, and bookbinders gather at this event every year to showcase their talents and wares, making it an ideal venue for someone who might be looking to get a bookplate of their own.

I also noted this week that my blog has passed the 11,000 visits mark.  As I think I wrote last year after it passed the 1000 visits mark, I wonder who are all these people and perhaps more important, how many of them love, have, or collect Canadian bookplates?  If you're a regular visitor to this site, I'd love to get a comment from you letting me know what you think of this blog as well as if there are any topics or subjects you'd like to see covered more or less?  My posts reflect 1) what interests me, and 2) what I think might interest you.  Hopefully I get the latter just as right as the former, but I won't know for sure unless you send me your thoughts on the matter.

Several blog posts later, one of things that began to concern me slightly was making sure I did't blog the same thing twice.  This blog is just a way for me to share ideas about one of my favourite hobbies, but the fact that it is a hobby means I take a much less structured approach to it than my other more formal historical research and publication.  That also means I hadn't kept any record of what I've blogged about before...until now.

See, the historian in me wanted to keep a record of this blog, as I know that it lives in cyberspace only so long as its host Blogger lives.  If anything should happen, I could lose all of the information I've shared here forever.  That got me thinking about how best to make a more permanent record, and after a little research I came across a few print on demand websites that will turn your blog into a physical book for a modest price.  I ultimately chose Blog2Print to create a hardcopy of all of last year's blogs, and was very pleased with the end product that arrived in the mail.  If you're running a blog of your own I'd highly recommend doing the same.  Not only are the books themselves very attractive and affordable, the effort involved to make the book is minimal.  Frankly, I can't think of a better way to preserve your blog.  Until next time...