Despite being an example of “giving is morecommon” I broadly agree with this post.
I’d conceptualize it as a spectrum, with “Giving books—no strings attached” at one end and “Loaning with a register and stated return timeframe” at the other end. As with most spectrums the healthy spot is likely the middle and context dependent.
For our tabling we ended up giving the books to people who had initiated a display of interest, with a conversation with the recipient about reading it and then passing it on to someone else who would read it. Which allows for sharing of the ideas, even if people weren’t able to make it to our events in the future. For people who are already regular attendees, or are likely to become them, I’d advocate for closer to the loan end of the spectrum.
I like the idea of thinking of this as a spectrum! When I’ve done tabling, however, (only a little, when I was at Google) I still found loaning worthwhile: since we’re all regularly coming to the same campus returning things wasn’t that hard. And if someone had acted like they didn’t think they’d be able to return it I’d have told them not to stress about it and to pass it on to someone else when they were done.
(Not trying to pick on you or your group! And you’re better placed to figure out what’s working for you.)
Despite being an example of “giving is more common” I broadly agree with this post.
I’d conceptualize it as a spectrum, with “Giving books—no strings attached” at one end and “Loaning with a register and stated return timeframe” at the other end. As with most spectrums the healthy spot is likely the middle and context dependent.
For our tabling we ended up giving the books to people who had initiated a display of interest, with a conversation with the recipient about reading it and then passing it on to someone else who would read it. Which allows for sharing of the ideas, even if people weren’t able to make it to our events in the future. For people who are already regular attendees, or are likely to become them, I’d advocate for closer to the loan end of the spectrum.
I like the idea of thinking of this as a spectrum! When I’ve done tabling, however, (only a little, when I was at Google) I still found loaning worthwhile: since we’re all regularly coming to the same campus returning things wasn’t that hard. And if someone had acted like they didn’t think they’d be able to return it I’d have told them not to stress about it and to pass it on to someone else when they were done.
(Not trying to pick on you or your group! And you’re better placed to figure out what’s working for you.)