Cultural deserts. The book infrastructures in Italy

The book scenario in Italy has a peculiarity that characterize it among European countries: opposite to a persistent growth in publishing production in terms of number of books circulated to the market, there is not a correspondingly growth trend in the readership. A significant part of policies promoting the reading is the book infrastructures, assumed as those sites where the meeting between supply of books and claim for reading can be boosted. Starting from the building of a data set, detailed to municipal level, listing the occurrence of book infrastructures in Italy, the study focuses on identifying the zones with no infrastructure and their features. First of all, the analysis shows geographies with no book infrastructures trying to answer the following questions: how many Italian municipalities have no infrastructure? How many people live there? Which types of municipalities are most exposed from the socio-economic perspective Then, with a focus on the Lazio region, the analysis aims at identifying the main features of places without book infrastructures, issues that most contribute to this scarcity and what opportunities exist to get out of the state of deprivation in which they are. The analysis is a first step of a study in progress. Concluding next steps are outlined