Recently on our members' Facebook page, we have been discussing how to manage bookmarks in a database.  In addition to what software to use, there is the question of how to describe the bookmarks, i.e., cataloging them.  I developed a basic system twenty years ago when I began using software for my collection.  I present it here as a starting point.  There is no right or wrong way to do it, although there are probably 5-7 elements that most of us could agree upon.  As this discussion progresses, we may create a new page on the IFOB web site for information on managing a collection. 

Along with the field definitions, I have also created a set of "cataloging rules" that help me apply the elements in a consistent way.  These rules may not be useful for others, however, since the purpose and design of a collector's database will vary.

Any comments on this scheme, which elements are most important, other elements to consider, etc. are most welcome!

Editor's Note: Randy has some great tips for beginning collectors as well as on storing collections.  We hope he will showcase his collection in an exhibit or online in the future. 

​I can’t remember exactly when I first started collecting bookmarks. However, I have been accumulating bookmarks for quite a long time – off and on for probably over 35 years. Being employed in the book trade my entire working life, I suppose that collecting bookmarks was a natural hobby to adopt and explore. And, as an avid reader and book collector, I also found bookmarks interesting items of associated ephemera. Of course, early on, I had no idea that I would become so involved in this area of collecting!

While working at Indigo books I had constant access to hundreds of free publisher promotional bookmarks, although I didn’t always take full advantage of this fact. I also found many bookmarks hidden and left behind inside of used books that I purchased over the years. More recently, I have also purchased a few of bookmarks from sellers on e-bay. And I also sent letters to used bookstores across Canada soliciting a copy of their own promotional bookmark, along with any other paper bookmarks they may have accumulated. This strategy worked quite well as I have had a response rate of about 15%. Many of these bookstore owners are quite happy to have the bookmarks they have accumulated over the years go to a worthy cause! Just recently I received over 500 bookmarks from a used bookstore owner in Ottawa. They had been saving all of these bookmarks for many years and couldn’t bring themselves to throw them away! Finally, of course, I have also used the IFOB swap list quite often over the past 6 years.

​I have slightly more than 6,000 bookmarks sorted and filed in about 20 binders, with approximately 1,000 more duplicates and other assorted bookmarks to trade.

​I struggled for a long time to find the best way to effectively store my bookmark collection. As a result, they remained unsorted and were stored in shoe boxes for many years. I eventually came up with a great solution when I discovered the double sided “Vario” plastic sleeves, manufactured by Lighthouse, available at a local coin and stamp dealer. {also online, for example] I utilize two sizes of these plastic sheets which are inserted into 3 ring binders, with either 3, 4, 5 or 6 pockets per page. These sleeves now accommodate the majority of my bookmark collection. I also have about 200 oversized bookmarks that do not fit into either of these sizes and so still remain stored in boxes! I don’t display any of my bookmarks - but I have recently been thinking of contacting my local library to see if they might be interested in doing a display of some of the highlights from my collection. And I would also like to post my bookmark collection on-line in the near future.

​I have contributed to the Bookmark Swap event for the past three years and will probably continue to participate in this annual event.

​I collect first edition books, autographed by the author where possible, as well as vintage real-photo postcards. I also haphazardly collect many other forms of vintage paper ephemera such as vintage catalogues, pamphlets and other kinds of old advertising materials.

​I am the co-author of a local history book on early lumbering in Ottawa and in the Algonquin Park area of northern Ontario, titled When Giants Fall: The Gilmour Quest for Algonquin Pine. The revised 3rd edition of our book is being released in 3 to 4 months.

Editor's note: Clemens was member #5 of IFOB in 2015. He has interesting approaches to his collection specialties and ways of showcasing his collection. 

Do you have any favorite types or special emphasis in your collection?

The main collecting track I follow goes to bookmarks representing towns or countries with respect to motive, material, or manufacturing technique. A big point here is made of course by bookmarks showing reproductions of paintings, a good entry into the world of fine arts. So, a bookmark is a personal traveling souvenir but also a keyhole allowing a look into the character of a location. Here are some examples:

I am especially happy about handmade bookmarks. These can be made from friends or relatives or directly from artists, e.g. at craft markets. But I collect all kinds of bookmarks as well. To be honest, I stopped taking bookmarks in German bookshops, because it became too much. 
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Somehow amazing also is the diversity of technologies in which bookmarks are made or in which they do their job:

Many other technologies exist, where magnetic clips or elastic straps are among the most common.
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To the book clip: I am just wondering who in such a hard-core process engineering company comes to the idea of producing bookmarks for advertising purposes. Actually, other companies like car producers make it as well.

What is the most unusual bookmark in your collection? 

This question is really difficult to answer, as Debrah Gai Lewis already mentioned. Some are very interesting, others funny or remarkable. In the sense of which one is most rarely to be found is this one probably from Iran. It shows a Polo scene, very finely painted on bone as the basis material. Actually, I am even not 100% sure that it is originally meant as a bookmark. May be somebody can enlighten me?

How do you acquire your bookmarks?

Besides book shops, the most rich sources are museums shops. I’m not even scared to visit souvenir shops. This has to be done alone, as other brave people, who can easily spend hours in warehouses, will give up after minutes. 

However, the most unique ones, often from the manufacturers by themselves, I find on flea or craft markets. Sometimes craftsmen’s workshops offer bookmarks as a side product or for advertisement. Recently I found a leather bookmark in a bags and belts shop and a silver bookmark in a jeweler, shops I would usually not even notice.

Many of course are donated to me from family or colleagues. Sometimes, when I have time, I do a bid on eBay. Also, Pinterest is a source of ideas.

How do you organize, display and store your collection?

This is my collection housed now in 50 gift boxes containing 100 specimens of bookmarks each for an estimated total of about 5,000. This is good enough to rummage in the boxes or put the content on the table to show it to friends.

​The bookmarks are continuously numbered more or less chronologically from the beginning. Further, I put them into an Access database. A formal description by size, date of production and acquisition, motif, text, etc. makes seeking and remembering easier. Besides that, it contains a free text meant to appear during display on the website.  

For exhibitions I use such display cases as the one below. Rosemarie Abel organized such events from time to time (see also the first picture).

In my office I have 6 of such cases, one for every continent, of course without Antarctica but separates for North and South America. This is the one for Europe. The background is a vintage map wallpaper from a Polish stationery company. The bookmark from Germany contains a little piece of the Berlin Wall with a bit of original colour, as it was painted on the west side. “Original” means that with all of these splinters you could easily build two new walls. 🙁

What has been your experience in using the IFOB Swap List?

Unfortunately, I have not many doubles, and did not take part in the Swap List. May be, after retirement that can change.

What do you enjoy about IFOB?  Anything you would like to see IFOB do in the future?

It is really great, how many collectors from all over the world take part and contribute to the site and the Facebook page. It was not long ago that I learned not to be alone with this hobby, but some people in Germany and some other European countries are also active. Now finally there is a worldwide platform.

Do you have any plans to celebrate World Bookmark Day next time?

I'm seriously considering it.

Do you collect anything else?

Besides collecting as such, I work on a website, where my bookmarks are displayed.

www.bookmark-museum.com [caution: may not work on some browsers]

The idea was not only to display bookmarks but to bring them to their own life. Bookmarks showing plants, e.g. grow up forming a botanical garden in the bookmark museum. It has some technical features like a virtual reading glass for magnification of bookmarks in high resolution or a torch to increase brightness. As Flash is no longer supported by many browsers I stopped work for the moment. 

Editor's note: If the museum works on your browser, you are in for a treat!  Explore the different categories to see how bookmarks can come to life. We hope Clemens will continue to work on this site as an unusual way to present his collection. 

Editor’s Note:  Olav is one of our newer members, joining in January 2020.  As you will see, he has a huge and interesting collection and has been sharing examples on our Facebook group for members.

Do you have any favorite types or special emphasis in your collection?

I only collect paper bookmarks from all over the world and all topics outside religious ones. The main reason is that with religious ones there is basically no end to it and I am not religious anymore.

What is the most unusual bookmark in your collection? 

Probably the ones (4) that can slide to show all the moon phases. They date back to the 40’s. 

How do you acquire your bookmarks?

Obviously I ask for them in bookshops wherever and whenever I can. I get them from people that save them. Also when I am traveling, I try to take home as many as possible without spending a fortune. I also buy on the internet like on the Dutch version of  Craigs list and on auction sites. 

How do you organize, display and store your collection?

All sorted bookmarks are stored in plastic folders in ring binders. The plastic folders I organize myself by using a bag seal machine. Very helpful. Currently I have well over 200 ring binders (wide ones), but when I am done sorting all bookmarks, I guess I will be close to 300. I estimate that I have at least 50,000 bookmarks! 

What has been your experience in using the IFOB Swap List?

Haven’t used the swap list yet. I have offered to swap bookmarks, but no transaction has taken place yet. I do have over five large moving boxes full of double bookmarks and it would be a waste to throw them away at some point. 

What do you enjoy about IFOB?  Anything you would like to see IFOB do in the future?

It’s nice to be part of a community of fellow collectors and recently I started sharing pictures and stories which is nice as I am getting positive reactions. Along the way useful information is exchanged.

Do you have any plans to celebrate World Bookmark Day next time?

I will next time.

Do you collect anything else?

I collect art, mainly silk screen prints. I collect 5 different designs of Waterman roller ball and ball point pens, and I have a large collection of classical stamps from Hungary. If I lived alone, I would probably become one of those hoarders 😊

Gaby was also inspired through her IFOB activities to add tiny bookmarks to the tiny books she makes and sells.  In these photos, you can see the display she uses to showcase the books on large letters.  Now they will also be promoting the use of bookmarks. 

Please tell us if you have examples of bookmark inspirations!

Tell us about yourself – where you are from, your education and occupation.
 
I am a New Englander by birth (b. 1932) and educated in schools and colleges in the Boston, Massachusetts area, except for a PhD degree from the University of Buffalo, in New York State. I have worked as a Professional Reference Librarian, but most of my career has been spent teaching English and American literature, and Library Science world-wide, in England, Africa, Australia, and across the United States. 

We often get requests about how to “retire” bookmark collections from collectors or those who inherit collections.  Can you explain how you donated your collection to the University?
 
During the ten years I was employed as  professor of Library Studies and Bibliographic Instruction in the James A. Michener Library at the University of Northern Colorado, my bookmark collection of some 900 items was frequently pressed into service to augment exhibits mounted by the library to celebrate, for example: "The Book" or "Reading" or "Academic Research" etc. When not being used for exhibits the collection was boxed and shelved in my office or elsewhere in the library. Thus, upon my retirement it seemed that the thing to do was to transfer ownership of the bookmark collection to the university. It is now kept in the Michener Library Archives where it is available upon request by library users (from on or off campus) to view or examine [ see [Description of Item], Manuscript Collections, F. X. Roberts' Collection: Bookmarks & Writings (SC 73), Archival Services, James A. Michener Library, University of Northern Colorado, Greeley, Colorado.  Accessed October 09, 2019.]. Transferring ownership was (in my case) simply a matter of signing a "Proffer of Gift" form. The proffer gave both physical and intellectual control of the collection to the Michener Library to manage, and use as wanted. 
 
My special interest is the study of the history, development and use of bookmarks.

Tell us about your research into bookmarks.  What questions were you trying to answer and how did you go about conducting your research?
 
My interest in researching the origin of bookmarks stemmed naturally from my collecting activities. Though, as I said earlier, collecting bookmarks was for me a casual activity. However, as I accumulated  bookmarks of various kinds and types, two questions became uppermost in my mind:  First, what really is a bookmark? that is, how do we define a true bookmark? Second, what was the origin of the bookmark? that is, when and where were bookmarks first used, and (per impossible!) by whom? (Spoiler alert: I eventually found no definitive answer to any of these questions.)
 
In an attempt to answer question one, (How is a bookmark defined?), I read through many dictionary definitions of the word "bookmark." (Working in a university library gave me access to a large number of dictionaries from the small pocket size to the OED.) Although details differed, depending on the size of a dictionary and the length of the entry for "bookmark," in the main dictionary definitions devoted themselves to the preserving, finding (or locating) function of the bookmark. Based on this fact and on my reading of as many articles about the use of bookmarks as I could acquire, I created my own working definition of the term:  "A 'bookmark' is a finding device acting as a portable (or sometimes stationary) 'index' to guide readers to where they left off reading, or to mark for relocation some particularly interesting, appealing or useful section of text in a book."  Dictionaries and glossaries do not normally define "bookmark" as something to be collected.
 
So the question remained, and even the "duck test" would not answer it. If it looks like a bookmark... If it acts like a bookmark... But what does a bookmark "look" like, and what does a bookmark "act" like? Obviously there may possibly be as many answers to these questions as there are types of bookmarks in existence. Perhaps for the bookmark collector the ultimate test would be to have the word "Bookmark" appear on the item. But that merely begs the question. It is a bookmark because it says it is!  But can this really be the ultimate criteria? For example: In the library of Balliol College at Oxford University, there is still in place in a fifteenth-century manuscript (MS 161 Andreas Billia) a slip of parchment with Latin in medieval hand written on it. And in another fifteenth-century manuscript at Balliol (MS 209 Duns Scotus) there resides a larger parchment piece folded in two with writing in a medieval hand between the folds. Both of these  scraps are no doubt long-forgotten "bookmarks." There is nothing written on them that says so, but who can doubt it. And what really avid collector would not want to posses such ancient "bookmarks?"
 
I began my preparation for researching the origin of bookmarks by studying sources on the history of the book, and on  the history of libraries, from ancient to modern times. My "reading research" gave me clues to where I might locate libraries in institutions of education, in religious institutions, such as cathedrals, and in museums, whose holdings included manuscripts and early printed books containing items notionally defined as "bookmarks" of various kinds and types. Having identified such places, I wrote to a number of them to make application as a visiting scholar on sabbatical leave from my university post. In this way I gained access to the manuscript and rare book collections held by, for example, the British Museum, the Bodleian Library at Oxford University,  other college libraries at Oxford and Cambridge universities, the libraries of both Exeter and Hereford cathedrals, the John Rylands Library in Manchester, England, and others. In these libraries I was able to do a hands-on, close up study of ancient bookmarks in medieval manuscripts, and in early printed books, as well as in more contemporary printed sources, up to and including the nineteenth century.

By Georg Hartong

[Editor's note: See more examples of bookmarks from this series of swap meets in our Gallery of Bookmarks on Bookmarks]

Bookmark collecting is rather popular in France.  French ladies especially do collect them, and most of them have at least one collecting theme: CATS!     

The first 4 years the sisters published a small book every year, related to collecting and bookmarks:  ​

Then the sisters started a new series in a new format: oblong (18 x 23,5 cm) - stiff paper - double-sided art photography, at the right end of every page a detachable bookmark - 10 by 16 folia.

By Georg Hartong
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[Editor's note: See more examples of bookmarks from this series of swap meets in our Gallery of Bookmarks on Bookmarks]
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There is no long history of bookmark swap meetings in The Netherlands. On 17th September 2005 Margreet du Pui, from Gent, Belgium, librarian at Sluiskil in the Dutch province Zeeland near the Belgium border and of course collector of bookmarks, organised the first swap meeting for collectors from The Netherlands, Belgium and France. Her library was a very suitable place and about 30 collectors were present, hoping a tradition was born. The swap meeting was continued in 2006 and 2007, when even a British collector, Joe Stephenson chairman of The Bookmark Society and editor of the TBS Newsletter, was present. But Sluiskil is situated very inconveniently  in The Netherlands and the library didn't facilitate the meeting any longer, so nothing happened in 2008.

Editor's note:  Gaby was chosen by IFOB editors as the first winner of the Asim Maner Award for promoting bookmarks based on her enthusiasm for bookmarks as evident in her profile, and also her contributions to IFOB including help with updating and editing the library, workshop and events pages and additions to the galleries on owls, bookmarks on bookmarks and care of books.  She also made a generous donation to IFOB.  Thanks and congratulations, Gaby!

​Another early bookmark is the one I got from a Japanese penfriend in my early teens. It was a paper bookmark with a ribbon and lots of Japanese writing on it so I had no idea what it was about. The picture showed a highway or something. It was not particularly attractive but a souvenir of a long over friendship that I kept with the letters and everything else my friend sent.

Later on I received more bookmarks from foreign friends, some were bought, some hand-made. I also travelled quite a bit, and when I happened to come across a nice one, I bought it for myself. Then also traveling friends brought some from abroad to add to my “collection”, which I didn’t see as a collection myself, though I thought about the best way to display them, finding it a shame to just keep them closed away. For that purpose I even got myself a book (Karl Heinz Steinbeisser: Lesezeichen sammeln). Later on I had the idea to display them under the glass of my coffee table (as you can read and see in the blog.

Specialties that I like

From all the bookmarks I have, the ones that I treasure most are the ones that have a story to tell: of people who made them or brought them for me, of places where I have been, of things that I have seen or that I love. Here are some examples: I have a bookmark-doll folded of Origami paper which a friend with Japanese origins sent to me. 

I also treasure a bookmark made of fine black lace that I got on a holiday in Malta where I saw old women do such intricate lace works. Then there’s a very special bookmark from Lapland made of thick purple felt with a plant stitched on it, it has a leather ribbon with a bead made of reindeer bone or horn. 

​In my collection are also a few bookmarks from Africa made of different kinds of African wood with cut-out African animals. From Nepal I have a bookmark made of hand-made Nepalese plant paper. It has a drawing of a flower on it and a folded human figure.

In Portugal I found a bookmark made of cork in the shape of a sardine. Georg Hartong, IFOB co-editor, sent me some bookmarks from the Spanish Pyrenees with dried flowers on them. I could go on like this. So in spite of keeping all bookmarks to be able to swap, I have made up my mind to actively collect the following: 

In this context I would also like to thank Jeffrey Edel for the lovely wooden bookmarks that Laine sent to me as part of the Asim Maner award. I love the idea that he recycles tiddles and bits and includes them in his works.

​There’s another story to tell about a French lady whom I got to know after leaving one of my baskets with bookmarks, as well as a note saying that I am a bookmark collector and would happily welcome every bookmark that someone wants to leave for me. A little later I found a postcard in the free library asking me to get in touch concerning bookmarks. I never managed to reach the person by telephone so I wrote a letter instead which I left in the library. A few weeks later it was gone but I never heard from this person. Then several months later I found another postcard, same handwriting, same request. This time the telephone number worked. It turned out that the lady never found my letter, but thanks to her perseverance we finally met and she gifted me well over 100 new bookmarks and many postcards as well (which I gave away to collector friends). Though she loves to read, she doesn’t collect bookmarks herself, but is just the type of person who picks up things and when she meets the right person she gives them away. What an idea! We have since stayed in touch, even exchanged presents, I gave her a handmade bookmark, and she gave me a handmade bookend in the shape of a cat!

Asim

I got to know Asim after I had been reading an article about bookmarks called "Fascinating Bookmarks" in the German magazine “Flow” (special edition about books).  The author had interviewed Asim and there was a reference to the IFOB website which I looked up out of interest. I liked the page and though I did not call myself a collector then, I thought I could let the webmaster know that. I got an instant very friendly reply from Asim and since then we stayed in touch. I became a member of IFOB, Asim wrote a blog  about my coffee-table, I helped with some requests, participated in the raffle. He really had a way of sweeping people along, without ever pushing. Anyway since then I decided to call myself a collector and (re)started to collect more actively. Even when he was on holiday he answered  IFOB-related messages, and when a few days later I got to know from his daughter that he had died. I was so shocked that I stopped looking at my bookmarks and didn’t return to the IFOB website for ages. I really admired Laine when she decided to take up the job as editor, with all the incredible work it involves. Regina from Lithuania with whom I was in contact at that time, helped me to make up my mind to continue collecting and I am pleased now that I finally returned to my passion. Not only for winning the award 😉 that Laine and Georg so kindly offered to me. Thank you once again for this honour!