The barganews Book Exchange – the English language book exchange opened in the offices of barganews.com in Piazza Angelio, Barga Vecchia more than five years ago. Since then thousands of books have been catalogued, entered into the database and put up on the shelves where they are used by the many members of the exchange. They pay a yearly subscription of Euro30 which allows them to exchange up to three books at a time and keep the books for up to three weeks.
An online database shows the members which books are available, keeps track of where the books actually are and reminds the members automatically via email if their books are overdue.
As the barganews book exchange wanted to avoid the inconvenience of using most public libraries in Italy, which are only open during office hours, a more radical approach was adopted allowing their members access to the library 12 hours a day and 7 days a week…… all full time members are issued their own key to the library. They can let themselves in to leave their books, choose new ones, leaving just a note of the books that they have chosen before closing the door behind themselves as they leave.
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Hmmm, something is new this week though …. as part of the continuing fusion taking place between the Giornale di Barga and barganews, the sign on the door has been changed and it now reads ” giornaledibarganews library” The old sign saying “book exchange” seem to cause some confusion -- renaming it “library” should hopefully make it clearer.