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Milan, July 25 2022 – Even a short journey can become a journey in the company of a book. The first smart library, the library in the metro, was inaugurated today on the mezzanine of the Porta Venezia station of the M1 line of the Milan metro.

It works like normal food and drink machines but instead of dispensing coffee it offers a completely free service, giving passengers and commuters the opportunity to choose from their favorite authors and titles. The offer is wide and updated, to satisfy all tastes and age groups, and does not only contain books: in fact, there are 400 products available including paper volumes, audiobooks, comics and DVDs.

The project, implemented thanks to co-financing obtained from the Lombardy Region and by virtue of the consolidated collaboration with ATM, has allowed the installation of a truly fully robotic library, which communicates with the catalog of the library system, which will record in real-time loan transactions. An opportunity for passengers who will be able to choose their favorite book while waiting for the train and return it between one trip and another.

The smart library, which follows the opening hours of the subway and is therefore open seven days a week, from six in the morning until well past midnight, is accessible not only to those who are registered with the library system but also to resident citizens in Milan, for which it will be enough, through a QR Code, to access a page where you can register for free and in real time (with SPID or electronic identity card), and then to the loan.

The new service is part of the broader Biblioexpress project, already launched in 2020 as part of the strategy that aims to guarantee greater territorial proximity, and which already sees thirty newsstands and five bookshops active as lending points in the neighbourhoods.

ATM and the Milanese libraries have been collaborating for years on "Milan to read", the initiative to promote reading which provides free ebooks offered by publishers, in the common belief that the book represents a tool for culture, updating, but also of sociality and inclusion. The new library service in the metro renews the collaboration also in terms of the most recent guidelines regarding the accessible city with guaranteed 24-hour services reachable in 15 minutes.

In the preliminary testing phase of the machine (which should end at the end of the summer), the library will offer a stock of books only and it will be possible to access only one loan at a time.