Hello Internet. Today I promised I'm going to be talking about letterboxing. Letterboxing is a hobby that goes back to the 1850s. It mixes outdoorsiness and art. All over the place on hiking trails and in other public places, people hide, boxes with rubber stamps and ink pads in them. Then online, they post clues about how to find them. Anyone can follow the clues, find the stamp, and stamp it into their personal journal. Then they can log into the logbook left in the box. Then they can go back online, go back to the website that they found the clue on, and tell the owner who planted the box that they found it. I had heard a little bit about letterboxing before, and geocaching, which is related. But I didn't know much about it until one of the library's patrons, Nancy, came and showed us her journal. Nancy has been letterboxing for a while, and she has this amazing journal full of all of the stamps that she's found. Something about it set off that old childhood love that I had for stickers, you know? I don't know what it is about stickers, but kids just love them. Maybe it's because you can stick them anywhere or because they're colorful, but collecting them is just fun. And that's how I feel about letterboxing. My supervisor Robin thought that it would be cool to put a letterbox in the library. So I did some research, and I've actually gotten really interested in the hobby. I carved stamp and made a hollowed out book to hide it in. Then I went around the library looking for numbers. We have murals and maps and things to count, plaques with dates on them, all sorts of numbers. After I had a big list, I wrote down the numbers, and decided on a call number for the book. Then I wrote clues designed to help people find it using the call number. The goal here was to get people to go all over the library. I wanted the book to look as legitimate as it could, so I gave it a title that seemed appropriate for the call number, and made a cover for it in publisher. After I printed the dust jacket, we bound it just like all the other books with the plastic mylar cover that library books have on them. It actually blends right in with all the other books on the shelf, and I'm immensely pleased with it. So this is where my book is on the shelf. I think that you can probably guess which one it is. I thought that a title related to boxing would be cute, and I love old pictures, so I browsed all of the fair use pictures out there that had boxers on them. Then I wrote up some goofy stuff for the back. It says that boxing etiquette is the definitive guide to how to punch people without offending them. When you open up the box, you get some historical information that tells you why we chose the image we did for our stamp. Even though I don't want to think of it that way, this is as much of a PR stunt as anything. The thing about libraries is that patrons use the services that they need and don't think about anything else. Parents with kids will come in, turn immediately right and go upstairs to the children's department. They completely ignore the first floor because it doesn't have what they need. Some people will only browse fiction, and some people only use the computers. However, the people who follow these clues will find themselves all throughout the library, and they will probably come into contact with at least two librarians on the way. They'll come into the library, take a look around, and see how amazing we are. Now, I'm not going to share the stamp that's actually in the letterbox with you. You have to keep the mystery alive, you know? But what I can show you are the stamps my husband and I are using to sign into logbooks. This is my stamp, a D20, or a 20-sided die, to celebrate my love of Dungeons and Dragons. I just carved it out of an eraser, which is recommended by all of the various letterboxing places. So when I sign my trail name, 20 goblins, I write the 20 on the die as though that's what I rolled, and then the word goblins underneath like that. For my husband's, we thought a lot about his concept. It is the profile of a person with a mohawk that looks like a butterfly wing. We're not completely happy with how it looks like a butterfly, but we are pretty happy with the stamp. And then we gave him the trail name Butterhead, which I think we just think is funny. I'm sorry that the writing here is backwards, by the way. I just couldn't get my camera to behave. So if you live in Southern New England, or you're coming here for the purpose of letterboxing, please stop by and look for my letterbox. The link to the clue is in the description. I'll hope to see you there.nar Wolf.