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relay race with a baton is typical, but five youngsters from Depok, West Java, have established a web-based community called Estafet Buku (book relay) in which people pass a book from one person to another for free to spread the spirit of reading.

Mursyidatul Umamah, 23, one of the administrators of the community'€™s Twitter account, @EstafetBuku, said that the movement began when her friend, Uswatul Chabibah, 32, offered via her Twitter account to lend out her books.

'€œShe received a good response so Uswa and four friends formed the Estafet Buku community in February last year,'€ said Mursyidatul, or Ida for short.

As of April, the @EstafetBuku handle has more than 800 followers. The followers are also called runners, Ida said, because in Indonesian, the word '€œestafet'€ is associated with relay running.

Ida went on to say that in order to join the relay, people could follow the community'€™s Twitter account and browse the collection of books featured on its blog, estafetbuku.blogspot.com.

'€œIf they find a title that they want to read, they can mention it on our Twitter and we will contact the last person to have received the book,'€ she said, adding that once a book entered the relay it would never return to its owner.

A person can only borrow one book at a time, so to borrow a new book, one has to pass on their old title to another person.

Although the Estafet Buku set one month as the maximum period to borrow a book, some people wind up having a book for three to four months, Ida said.

Ida added that the community did not impose any punishments, but they would track the Twitter account of the '€œrunner'€ and ask them to relay the book to someone else.

Though the community is centered in Depok, the relay has spread outside of Greater Jakarta, she said.

'€œIf people outside Jakarta want to read a book available in Jakarta or vice versa, a deal will be made by the runner who has the book at that time and the person who will receive the book.'€

Costs associated with the delivery of a book can be born by one party or shared.

'€œIn some cases, the next runner buys phone credit for the previous runner in exchange for the delivery cost,'€ Ida said.

Evi Selvia, 23, a runner in the community, said she began following @EstafetBuku the first month it went live.

'€œMy friend, who was one of the founders, told me about it and I was interested in participating in the relay,'€ said Evi.

Although she had to spend time exchanging books or delivering them to another island, Evi said she enjoyed the relay.

'€œIf I borrow books from the library, I can'€™t share testimonies about the books or make new friends,'€ she said.

Carrying the tagline '€œSharing the Poison of Books'€, the community has hundreds of books in its collection, some in English. Most of the titles are popular fiction like Ayu Utami'€™s Lalita, Andrea Hirata'€™s Rainbow Troops series and Salman Rushdie'€™s Shalimar the Clown in English. (nai)