About us
Serenlibrità is where the books you already have at home start circulating again, among people who live nearby.
What it is
Serenlibrità connects the person who has a book on the shelf with the person who would like to read it, within the same neighbourhood. Nothing is sold and nothing is bought: books are lent, the two of you agree in person, and the book goes back home.
There is no commission, no subscription and no catalogue you have to fill in: the books you have already read are enough.
Why it exists
It starts from an ordinary observation: plenty of homes hold books that were read once, and somewhere on the same block there is almost always someone who would go looking for one of them. Libraries do invaluable work but they do not reach everywhere; online swap groups put distant people in touch, and shipping often costs more than the book.
Serenlibrità tries to close that gap in the simplest way: a few hundred metres, a meeting, a few words exchanged face to face.
Who runs it
There is one person behind Serenlibrità: Alberto Galassi, who develops and maintains it single-handedly, as a private individual. There is no company behind it, no investors and no editorial staff.
When you read “we” on these pages it is a courtesy: the person answering your email is always the same one.
The name “serenlibrità” is a trademark filed by Alberto Galassi (registration pending): you may quote it to talk about the service, not use it as the name of something of your own.
Where the content comes from
The books are added by the members themselves, one at a time, from their own home library: the titles you see are real copies that really sit in those homes, not a catalogue bought somewhere else.
Some bibliographic details — author, year, category — are filled in with the help of open archives such as Open Library. The quotations at the top of the pages come from Wikiquote and are used under its licence, with a link back to the source entry. Uploaded covers stay with whoever uploaded them.
How we handle location
Location is the only sensitive piece of data the service really uses, and it uses as little of it as it can: for each person we know an area, never an address. The point shown on the map is shifted at random by 150–300 metres from the real one, and the real one is neither shown nor stored.
Consent to geolocation can be withdrawn whenever you want, with immediate effect. The detail of what we process and why is in the privacy policy.
How it is funded
Serenlibrità is free and sells nobody's data to anyone. The running costs — server, domain, email — are paid by the person who keeps it going.
Since August 2026 the public pages may carry advertising, and anyone who wishes can leave a voluntary contribution. There is no venture capital to pay back to anyone and no plan to sell the project on.