🆓 Free Vintage Library Check-out Card Bookmarks by Elayne Crain
Make a mark in your book while protecting your book with these customizable Photoshop (or .pdf) file downloads, free for personal use.
I have a hard time marking my books. Maybe my elementary school librarian, Miss Shuttleworth, who always treated the school’s library books like objects d’art, rubbed off on me. Or maybe, in a line of thought that served me very well when it was time to sell back my college textbooks, I’ve always considered books spendy and/or investment pieces—which, newsflash: they are! Or perhaps the Scouts’ “leave no trace” ethos just never left me entirely.
Whatever the basis of my bound-paper proclivities, my entirely self-imposed book-handling rules seem to include:
NO writing in books! Heavens, no! Not with pen—not even with pencil!
Get the lead out, book lovers. UNEASY use of highlighting—possibly forever discontinued after just one foray. This is something I just recently did for the first time; basically, I saw Melissa Manlove marking up a book during the Quiet Retreat and threw caution to the wind and copied her (because she’s a literary badass, and I want to be a badass, too). But now, when I open that book, it feels like I gave it an involuntary set of tattoos that the book’s creators did not sign off on! (Having said that, it’s a Lisa Congdon book, so perhaps the book’s okay with them.) Still, I’m not sure I have the stomach to highlight a book again.
NO folding down corners! What are we, origamists? Even if we are, that’s what the little square papers are for—keeping our folding off the books!
ONLY bowing pages in during bookmarking during an extreme emergency. That emergency being: we are keeping up with several different pages (looking at you, maps and whatnot) and suddenly have to get up to fetch some proper bookmarks.
NIGHTMARE situation! It took all my strength to hold my phone steady to take this shot instead of immediately releasing the captive pages! If it’s a picture book and I want to play with the illustrations, photocopies are my friend. Case in point: my newest “purse notebook,” which James Marshall would probably find off-putting—désolé, Jim!
Much more inspiring than the boring blue covers the notebook previously had.
Anyways, this leads me—at least in a sideways way—to a bunch of free things I’d love to share with you: these Public Works Administration “Be Kind to Books” posters (free to download and use!), and the following bookmarks, which you can likewise personalize and print for yourself if you so choose!
OPTION A: If you want to make a “Your Name” (or perhaps the name of your critique group?) library bookmark (and have access to Photoshop to change the text), you can download that file here—free for personal use.
OPTION B: If you are celebrating a new book, this even more personalized file (based on a book rather than a library) may suit your needs better—free for personal use. I *may* have used this to craft myself some bookmarks in celebration of my debut picture book announcement. Note: if you want to use the typewritery font I used for these, Special Elite, it’s available as a free font from Google Fonts; otherwise, Times New Roman would probably work just fine.
OPTION 3: Finally, if you want to print a blank version (and then, what, maybe run it through your typewriter—which sounds like I am being facetious, but I assure you, I am not—I own a typewriter, myself) to personalize in an offline way, this .pdf download file is probably what you want.
Each file makes four bookmarks at a time. Regardless of which, print the file (or your updated file) on 8.5x11” paper or cardstock, and then chop it down (or scissor cut) to the size you want. (Leaving it longer at the top allows you to add a hole punch and ribbon embellishment easily, but chopping it shorter makes it look more like an actual vintage library check-out card.)
Yours in not leaving our mark (except with a bookmark),
Elayne
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Aww I love these Elayne! I was just thinking about these the other day. When I was a kid and they used to have these in the books, I used to love looking at how many people had checked the book out previously and when the last time that was! I always found it fascinating— and now we have no way of knowing! Unless someone happens to leave the receipt in the book— that they more than likely used as a bookmark!
And I too have trouble marking up my own books. I didn’t so much mind with text books, as I thought that was the point, though it was distracting when buying a used textbook, and somebody highlighted something I wouldn’t have! But now, I have been underlining passages in books that resonate with me— now if I actually ever go back and relook at these…. Not sure, but at least should I ever do that, I’ll know what I thought was interesting! Though, I don’t know about marking up a picture book! Those seem too precious!