BookReplacer: una piattaforma per lo scambio dei doni

Abstract

BookReplacer is the free platform for the management of exchanges and gifts within libraries developed for the Urban Library System of the Municipality of Brescia and in use at the Library Network of Brescia and Cremona. This tool aims to facilitate sharing between libraries through a streamlined procedure and an immediate and user-friendly interface. The main work steps are: entering one’s own donations into the system, managing incoming bookings, consulting donations in other libraries and sending bookings to other libraries. The article, after a foreword, traces the origins and the idea behind the project. It then addresses the issue of the cataloguing data behind the recognition of documents and analyses the statistics and usage data from the origin of the project and in the last year of use. Next, the difference between exchange and gift is addressed and which digital solutions were adopted. Finally, a more technical part on the types of notifications and automatisms activated and on stand-by experiments. A consideration is also made on the environmental aspect and how this platform responds to the need for territorial rootedness that a library, also of conservation, such as the Queriniana of Brescia has in its institutional tasks. The article concludes with a reflection on possible future developments, as all experimental projects are still subject to improvement and implementation.