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What a distributed library actually is

Five ways to keep books moving without buying new ones. What works in each, what does not, how many there are in Italy today, and how lending between neighbours fits into a town's reading pact.

Updated on . First published on 14 August 2026.

"Distributed library" is a phrase used for very different things that share a single idea: the books already exist; the problem is that they sit still. Tens of thousands of titles are printed in Italy every year, and the vast majority of the copies sold are read once and then spend years motionless on a private shelf. It is not a problem of scarcity: it is a problem of circulation. Nor is it a problem of readers: according to ISTAT, in 2024 57.1% of people aged six and over read at least one book in the year, about thirty-two million people (ISTAT, Books and libraries, 2024 and 2025).

Five answers are in use, and it is worth knowing what each one can really do, because each solves a different piece of the problem and none solves all of them. This guide lines them up, says what already exists in Italy with numbers and sources, and explains how a town council can bring lending between neighbours into its own local reading pact.

Today's numbers

Right now Serenlibrità lists 124 books available to borrow, offered by 40 people in 34 municipalities. The map of book boxes holds 47,557 little free libraries and 112,568 public libraries, worldwide. The figures come from the database and refresh on their own, once a day.

The five forms, one by one

1. The public library

The oldest form, the most solid, and the one almost everyone underrates. It has professional cataloguing, interlibrary loan, staff who know how to recommend, and in Italy a dense network: the union catalogue of the national library service can be searched from home (OPAC SBN). If the book you want exists, a public library will find it for you, even in another province.

What it does not solve. Opening hours (often incompatible with working people), the waiting time of interlibrary loan, and above all the fact that the catalogue is what it is: the new release from three months ago has ten reservations ahead of you. And in many small towns the nearest library is fifteen kilometres away.

2. Bookcrossing

A book is "released" in a public place, a bench, a train, a café, with a code that lets you follow its journey if whoever finds it registers it on the movement's website (BookCrossing). The idea, born in the early 2000s, is beautiful and has one enormous practical flaw: it is a gift, not a loan, and there is no control over where the book ends up.

What it does not solve. Everything that requires intention. You cannot search for a title, you cannot count on anything, and the share of books actually re-registered after being found is tiny. It works as a gesture and as a surprise; it does not work as a way to get hold of a book you want to read.

3. The little free library

The wooden box on the street corner, with a glass door and books inside: take one, leave one. It is the form that has spread most in the last fifteen years, and it works because it is physical, visible and needs no sign-up. The American Little Free Library network registered its 200,000th box in March 2025, across 128 countries (Little Free Library); in Italy OpenStreetMap volunteers have mapped more than eight hundred, and our guide to little free libraries counts them city by city.

What it does not solve. It has a content-quality problem known to anyone who has ever looked after one: without a keeper, within six months it fills up with computer manuals from 2003, magazines and out-of-date school textbooks. The rule "take one, leave one" rewards whoever wants to get rid of what they do not want. Whoever keeps it well drops by every week to take things out, and that, in practice, is a job.

4. The building shelf

The smallest, domestic version: a shelf in the entrance hall, or a messaging group where someone writes "finished this one, anybody want it?". It has one advantage no other form has: people know each other, so the book almost always comes back.

What it does not solve. Scale. Thirty families are too small a base for the book you want to be there, and the pool does not grow: the people in the building across the street do not even know that shelf exists.

5. Lending between neighbours

This is the form this site deals with, and it is best described without inflating it: a searchable list of books that stay in their owners' homes, with a way to ask for them and a radius of a few hundred metres or a few kilometres. How it works in practice is in the guide on lending a book to a neighbour.

What it solves compared with the other four: search. You can look for a specific title instead of hoping it is there. The book does not have to be moved to a neutral place, so there is no box to keep and no storeroom to run. And the owner stays the owner, which means they are willing to offer even books they would never give away, which are almost all the good ones.

What it does not solve. It takes many people to work. A shared shelf with ten members in a city is indistinguishable from nothing: the classic chicken-and-egg problem, and no technique gets around it; it is solved only by density, one neighbourhood at a time. It also requires meeting in person, which is its virtue (you meet someone) and its friction (you have to leave the house).

How to choose

They are not alternatives: they add up well.

  • You want a specific title → public library, or lending between neighbours if there are enough people within your radius.
  • You want to get rid of books you do not want back → little free library or bookcrossing.
  • You want your books to circulate without losing them → lending between neighbours or a building shelf.
  • You want to meet people through reading → a reading group, and see the guide on how to set one up.
  • You have outgrown children's books → any form, right away: it is the category that is always useful to someone within three streets.

Why density matters more than anything

One number governs all five forms: how many people take part within the distance you are willing to walk. Below a certain threshold any system is empty and looks broken; above it, the same system suddenly becomes useful. That is why a distributed library is not built with an announcement but with a neighbourhood: fifty people across three streets are worth more than five thousand scattered over a region.

The practical consequence, for anyone who wants to start something, is counter-intuitive: do not widen the radius, tighten it. A system that works in one neighbourhood gets copied in the next one; a system that covers a whole province without density works nowhere in that province.

What already exists in Italy

More than it seems, and almost all of it is public.

  • Libraries. The national union catalogue can be searched online (OPAC SBN), and in many areas interlibrary loan between neighbouring towns is free: it is the first thing to try.
  • The "Città che legge" (Reading Cities). A qualification that the Centre for the Book and Reading of the Italian Ministry of Culture grants to municipalities that run reading promotion policies continuously: for 2024-2026 900 municipalities obtained it (Ministry of Culture). Almost all of them have a local reading pact, and the pact is the door described in the next section.
  • Little free libraries. OpenStreetMap records them with a dedicated tag (amenity=public_bookcase): more than eight hundred in Italy, led by Milan, Rome and Turin. The guide to book boxes lists them by city with the name and page of each one.
  • Reading groups. They spring up everywhere, inside libraries and outside; on Serenlibrità you can open one in a minute, and the guide to reading groups explains how to make it last.
  • Lending between neighbours. The youngest form, and the real numbers are the ones at the top of this page: few, and honest. It grows one neighbourhood at a time, as the section on density says.

Bring it to your town

Italian Law 15 of 2020, "Provisions for the promotion and support of reading", provides in Article 3 for local reading pacts: agreements through which a municipality brings libraries, schools, bookshops, associations and private citizens together in concrete actions to increase the number of readers (text of the law, in Italian; reading pacts on the Centre for the Book website). A pact is a memorandum of understanding: you sign it, and then you fill it with things you do.

Lending between neighbours goes in as one of those things, at no cost and with nothing to install. Serenlibrità is a single platform for everyone: there are no per-town versions, and no town needs to set one up. What is needed is a simple agreement inside the pact, through which the municipality does three things:

  1. makes it known, through the library, the schools and the associations that already sign the pact, to people who have books at home and to people looking for them;
  2. offers the places it already has, the library first of all, as meeting points for handing books over;
  3. marks the book boxes and libraries of its territory on the map, so that newcomers find them.

There is no release calendar to promise and we do not promise one: the project is run by one person and grows at the pace of the neighbourhoods that adopt it. If you are an administrator, a librarian or simply someone who wants to propose it to their town, write to us: we answer in person, with a name and surname.

Frequently asked questions

Does a distributed library replace the public library?
No. A public library has a catalogue, staff and interlibrary loan that no informal form can offer. Distributed forms sit beside it: they cover evenings, far-off neighbourhoods and the books the catalogue does not have yet.
What is the difference between bookcrossing and lending between neighbours?
In bookcrossing the book is given to whoever finds it and does not come back. In lending between neighbours it stays with its owner: you search by title within a radius, ask, and return it after reading.
How many people does it take to work?
What counts is the number of people within the distance you are willing to walk, not the total. A few dozen people across three streets are worth more than thousands scattered over a region.
Can a town or city council join?
Yes, through an agreement inside its own local reading pact: the platform stays one for everyone and the council introduces it to libraries, schools and associations. No separate installation, no fees.
Is Serenlibrità free?
Yes. Lenders and borrowers pay nothing; the project runs on the time of the person who maintains it and on a few donations.
Where do I find the little free libraries near me?
On the Serenlibrità map, which shows the book boxes and libraries mapped on OpenStreetMap all over the world, and in the dedicated guide, city by city.

In short

  • The problem is not a shortage of books: it is that they sit still.
  • Public library: unbeatable for catalogue and search, limited by hours and waiting lists.
  • Bookcrossing: lovely as a gesture, unreliable as a method.
  • Little free library: effective and visible, but it needs a keeper or it fills with cast-offs.
  • Building shelf: high trust, pool too small.
  • Lending between neighbours: you can search for a title and the book stays with its owner, but it needs density.
  • Local density matters more than total size, and a municipality can help through its reading pact.

Sources