You may know about scrapbooks or photo books, which display mainly photos beautifully into books. Crowdsourced memory books, or group memory books are similar, but different in a few important ways. The main difference between a photo book and a crowdsourced memory book is the content and who creates the book.

Emphasis on Different Content

With photo books, the emphasis is on printing pictures taken over time into a book. The creator uses their own phone camera roll or manually gathers photos from friends and family. This involves creating a book of photos for their friend or family of previous years or months. The emphasis is on the photos in the book, and has a single source of content – the creator.

Scrapbooks include photos, notes, and are very design heavy. They may take months to create, using fun borders for each page and carefully crafted photos.

Crowdsourced memory books are similar to scrapbooks, and include letters as well as photos. The designs may be simpler than scrapbooks, but are also less time-intensive to create.

Multiple Contributors

What makes Crowdsourced memory books unique, is that they utilize photos and letters from various people. There may be one designer of the book, but the content of letters, memories, and photos are gathered from a group of people. A crowdsourced memory book involves gathering letters and photos from a group of people to produce a physical book. In this way a memory book has multiple authors, where a normal photo book or scrapbook would have one major author or contributor. Today’s technology and the internet makes gathering content from multiple people possible.

Crowdsourced Content versus Crowdfunded

You may have heard of crowdfunding, where companies like GoFundMe and Kickstarter will let people seek funding for a business idea or charitable need. Crowdfunding involves gathering money from a group of people. Crowdsourcing involves gathering anything from a group of people, be it photos, letters, money, ideas. Any mass gathering of content is considered crowdsourcing. Crowdsourcing content is a great way to bring together information from a group of people. A crowdsourced memory book is an especially useful gift as it gathers memories and photos from a group, relieving some of the pressure in designing a meaningful gift.

As you create your personalized book, it’s important to consider what type of book you are looking to create. If you have the content and want to emphasize mainly photos, a photo book or custom scrapbook may be the best option. If you need help gathering the photos, and want to tap into a network of people to gather memories and photos, a crowdsourced memory book like Gratbook may be the best option.