The Barganews Book Exchange – an english language book exchange which opened two years ago in the offices of barganews.com in Barga Vecchia has been shut for most of the winter through various and recurring bureaucratic problems. These problems have now all been sorted out and they are once more back in the business of collecting and supplying books to members of the book exchange. A recent donation of new books has increased the number of books available and once again new shelves to contain all the books are being planned.
barganews.com has been on line since 1996 and during those twelve years more than 2500 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 a permanent library and book exchange. 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*. The books are all scanned into the database using a bar code scanner (similar to the ones used in supermarkets)
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.
There is a second part-time membership open to non residents which is valid for one month and cost Euro 15 so that visitors to Barga can join in the scheme for their holiday reading.
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 the full time members access to the library 12 hours a day and 7 days a week. All full time members are 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.
The barganews book exchange website is here
* members who have books now long overdue (as the library has been shut since 30th November) please note that they can return these books as of today.