The barganews Book Exchange – an english language book exchange/ library opened in the offices of barganews.com in Piazza Angelio, Barga Vecchia three years ago just keeps on growing.
Just this month hundreds of new books have been catalogued, entered into the database and put up on the shelves.
barganews.com has been on line since 1996 and during those 14 years more than 3500 books have been collected and donated by visitors to their offices.
These books are now being put back into the public domain by the creation of the permanent library and book exchange.
Members of the book exchange pay a yearly subscription of Euro30 which allows them to exchange any book that they own for another from the bookshelves. They can 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 has been adopted allowing their full time members access to the library 12 hours a day and 7 days a week.
All full time members will issued with 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.
Ask him about the pay scale for assistant librarians
I wanted to ask if that was the Assistant Librarian in the photo… I cannot believe that he is still there!!…. I remember seeing him years and years ago when I first started coming to Barga, way back in the early 2008's. There he would be coming to the Book Exchange sometimes as early as 10 or 11 o'clock in the morning. I would sometimes meet him there and we would sometimes go to Aristo's for a coffee. Sometimes we would just stay at the Book Exchange and talk about the train schedules. He often complained about the pay, but always in a very polite and cordial way. If it rained and the rain was hard he would come with an umbrella. Ahhh I can remember it now like it was only just last March and early April… ahh how the memories come flooding back……
Thank you for letting us know that time really stands still in Barga….
Nah, can't be the same man, this new guy is a bus affecionado, bit of a rainman type actually, knows all the bus timetables off by heart 😉