This site aims to help people swap Ladybird Books with eachother. It provides you with an easy means of discovering who has books which you want, and who wants books which you have. In this way it will help you organise swaps easily, by cross-referencing the wants and swaps lists of its many users. Click here to look at users' lists
Apolpogies for the general buggyness and state of ill repair on this site... It should be functional which is what matters. Ideally it needs reprogramming it a bit more professionally. Basically the deal is, I don't have much time to maintain it as it is, although if someone offered to host the site for me, I would have a go at rebuilding it with PHP and MySQL. That kind of hosting might cost say £30 a year, but the site would run a lot more smoothly.
First of all, you must register your name and e-mail address with us, creating a new account for you. Please be aware that the details you give will be forwarded to any other user who has items on your wants list, or wants items on your swaps list. This is the whole point of the site.
You must specify a username and password - these are necessary to ensure that only you have access to your personal wants and swaps lists. I suggest that you give your surname as a username, and choose a short word known only to you as a password. Many users may already be familiar with this process. Once your account has been created, the difficult part is over. Please make a note of your username and password - each time you use the site, you will need to enter your username and password above to access your wants and swaps list.
Once you have entered your username and password, you will be presented with a list of options. Before you can start searching for swaps, you must add some books to your lists of wants and swaps (spares). Click on either "Add new item to wants list", or "Add new item to swaps list". You will be presented with a form to fill in - type in the details of the book you want, or have spare. The series number and book number (within the series) fields are not essential, although please fill them in if you can (they are shown on the back of most ladybirds). Book titles will be matched if the words are spelt the same way, and are in the same order. Case, punctuation and spacing are ignored.
There two lists of options about the condition and edition of the book. If you are entering a swap which you have, please select an approximate category for its general condition, and the edition of the book. The categories given for the edition are approximate, and include the most common ways of distinguishing between the various periods of Ladybird publishing history.
When filling in details about wants, you must specify the minimum condition you will tolerate, and the edition you want. The swap search will match items if they are of the required condition and edition, or are better than required.
Please continue to add items to both your wants and swaps list - the more you add the more swaps you will find. If you want to view a list of all your swaps or wants entered so far, click on "View/edit wants list" or "View/edit swaps list". This will list all the books you have entered, and will give you the option to remove any one of them (you may want to do this if you made a mistake entering it, or if the book is no longer wanted/available to swap).
This is very easy. Once you have built up a wants and swaps list, click on "Search for swaps". Your wants and swaps lists will be compared with those of other users, and any matches will be shown to you. For every person, there will be a list of books they have, that you want, and a list of books you want, that they have. This allows you to organise swaps easily. Click on the persons name for more details about them (including their e-mail address). Note that they will also be given your details. You can then contact them and agree the swap.
A good site for Ladybird book collectors is at http://www.cheesypeas.demon.co.uk/ladybird/index.html. This includes a fairly comprehensive list of Ladybird titles, a history of Ladybird books, and a notice-board for collectors names, e-mail addresses and details.
A small ladybird auction is taking place at http://www.btinternet.com/~withercy. You could also try searching e-bay for ladybird books
You may like to subscribe to a e-groups mailing list for ladybird collectors, look under http://www.egroups.com/list/ladybirdbooks/
The newsgroup rec.collecting.books may be useful too.
If you have any comments, queries or problems with the site, please contact me. I don't currently have much time to maintain it though.
Matthew Willson