Facebook

PaperBackSwap Blog


Posts Tagged ‘Volunteers’

DEAR R&R: Newsletter – September 2006

Sunday, September 3rd, 2006

Holy Cow, did you see those numbers at the top of the site? We are almost at three-quarters of a million books! Our goal of making it to 1,000,000 books before the end of the year gets closer every day!
Dear R&R—I just found out about the canceled transactions page and I was surprised to see books I sent out on the list! How come I didn’t know about these? Will I get credit for sending these books? — Startled in Sheboygan

Dear Star,

Never fear! There are many reasons why a canceled transaction might be on your Canceled Transaction list (which is available by clicking the link at the top of your Transactions Archive page). The only ones you wouldn’t be notified about are:
(1) those you canceled yourself
(2) Wish List offers (of books you posted) that were declined, and the book was passed to the next Wishing Member, to whom you sent it
Check your en route and completed transactions—you will see that the active or completed transactions for these books are there, and will earn you credit (or have already earned you credit)! Each transaction is an agreement between ONE sender and ONE requestor—if either cancels, the transaction goes onto both members’ canceled lists. Thus, a book can be involved in multiple transactions, even if you have only one copy of the book to send out. One active, completed transaction is all it takes to earn you credit for sending the book!

*see the Help Center item “Can I see my past swaps?” at http://www.paperbackswap.com/help/help_item.php?id=18

Dear R&R—I got a request for two books, but when I accepted it, one of them disappeared! What happened??? — Bewildered in Buffalo

Dear Buffy,

When you accepted the multiple-book request, did you check the box next to each book that you could send before clicking “I can mail”? If not, you canceled any book that didn’t have its box checked! When a multiple-book request comes up on your account page, the instructions are written there. When you click “I can mail” on the multiple-book request, a box pops up asking you to confirm that the number of boxes that you checked (and therefore, books you have agreed to send) is correct. Please read before you click! I am sorry that this happened. You will need to repost this book to your bookshelf again, to wait for another requestor. I hope this book is requested again soon. When you repost it, it may be offered to the previous requestor, if there were no other copies in the system when you canceled. So you may be able to send both books to her in one package after all!

*see the Help Center item “My request disappeared!” at
http://www.paperbackswap.com/help/help_item.php?id=222

Dear R&R—How can I tell who’s requesting the book from me when I repost it? — Buffy again

Dear Buffy,

Simply click the PM (Personal Message) button on the active transaction for the book; the requestor’s name will come up in the To: field of the empty Personal Message. You can also download the address file to check the identity of the requestor, by clicking Print Wrapper and clicking Print Wrapper Now on the Wrapper Settings page. You don’t have to print it—just open the downloaded file to see the name and address there.

Dear R&R—When do you sleep? — Concerned in Kalamazoo

Dear Connie,

Thanks for asking. We don’t get a lot of sleep! With the return to school, our schedules are crazier than ever—and so, I am sure, are many of yours! We appreciate those members who have made the effort to find the answers to their questions in the new Help Center. We still get a lot of feedback, though! We may need to take some “R&R” (Rest and Relaxation) in the next month: we may try a feedback-free week (no feedback responses for a week) to see if we can reduce the daily numbers of feedback messages we receive. Please use the Help Center! Not all of your questions can be answered there, but many of them can. The Forums, the Help Center, and the Tour Guides are all excellent resources if you have a question about the site.

Speaking of Tour Guides — and all our volunteers — if any of you are feeling overburdened, please let us know. You can “take a break” any time, and return whenever you wish. We love our Volunteers, but we don’t want to wear you out! PBS should be fun — and we want you to have time to (you guessed it!) READ.

*You can get to the Help Center by clicking the gold button in the left menu of any page on the site.

Hurrah For Our Volunteers!! Newsletter – January 2006

Sunday, January 1st, 2006

In January, we sent out an email call for help. We have been so encouraged by the response! We had so many members come forward to offer their time and effort that we had to scramble to get everything in place. Volunteers are now active in the areas of New Member Guidance (Tour Guides), Book Image Collection, Book Descriptions, Website Editing, Marketing and Games. {We are still interested in finding PHP programmers to help Robert with his ENORMOUS To Do list of improvements he plans to make to the site…if you want to help with this and are an accomplished PHP programmer, please send Robert a message from the feedback area.}

Our Tour Guides are a mighty and powerful group! Each new member is assigned a Tour Guide automatically upon joining the club. The Tour Guide introduces him or herself by email along with a Personal Message. Tour Guides are doing terrific work, answering new member questions and helping them learn the ropes. If you are a new member, for goodness’ sakes, take advantage of your Tour Guide if you have a question about how to use the club–simply log into your account and click on your Buddy List on the right-hand side. Your Tour Guide’s name will already be there, and you can click the button to send a Personal Message. Remember, the more of these questions get asked of your Tour Guides, the fewer that we have to answer in Feedback. Not that we don’t love to hear from our members, but answering too many Feedback each day pretty much eliminates the chance for us to do anything else for the site. So please, check the FAQs or ask your Tour Guide first! Tour Guides: You all are our PBS Ambassadors, and we thank you for your patience and energy. You are doing a super job!

Our Image Collectors have located and uploaded thousands of images to the database to replace those ugly blue “Cover Not Available” eyesores. Our Website Editors are working hard to correct all the inaccuracies in the database. You can help both of these groups in their efforts by submitting any inaccuracies you find. If you have an image of a book cover to upload (to replace an erroneous one, or to provide a graphic for a book that has No Cover Available on its book details page), simply scroll down to the very bottom of any page on the site and click Upload Book Covers. You don’t have to do anything special to the graphic files–simply make sure they are “cropped” (no white or black border around the image), and they are good to go! If you find a text inaccuracy (ie, paperback listed as hardback, or wrong title or author of a book), you can also submit the correct information by scrolling down to the bottom of any page on the site and clicking Edit Book Data. Enter the ISBN of the book and make your changes to the book information on the next page. Submitted images and book data corrections will have to be reviewed by the volunteers before they can be added to the database, so the change won’t take place immediately. Thanks in advance to anyone who does this–improving the quality of the database improves the club for all!

Thanks to ALL our volunteers–we are touched by your generosity, and grateful for your hard work. If you would like to volunteer, simply send in an email to Volunteer@PaperBackSwap.com.