So you?ve postponed your spring-cleaning for the 10th time this month. You can?t lay your hands on that first edition of Ernest Hemingway?s The Old Man and the Sea, and, you don?t know what to do with that carton full of last year?s NatGeos. A difficult scenario?but don?t lose heart. There might be a solution. Log on to http://www.socialway.com and you could find a taker in cyberspace for all the good ol? stuff.

A brainchild of Bangalore-based Tavant Technologies, a specialised IT solutions and services provider, SocialWay?s goal is to be the earth?s largest library ? an online community library that has things listed by the people for others to borrow and that is completely free for anyone to use. Whether you want to give away, lend, or borrow books, DVDs, toys, tool kits, et al ? the site promises just that ? all for the sake of reducing your carbon footprint, and rewarding you with new friends.

Says Tavant Technologies co-founder and VP, Nita Goyal, ?Since our company already develops web application software, this seemed to be an opportunity to do something new. Some employees came up with this idea and we saw it as a ?corporate social innovation? that could leverage the strengths of the company.?

Open source technologies such as Java, Struts, Spring, Hibernate and MySql have been used for the database. ?We use a open source search engine (Lucene) to allow effective keyword search for items posted on the site. The application talks to Amazon web service and can fetch information like item description, image and reviews from Amazon. This allows users to post their items easily with lot of information using just the ISBN or UPC code,? says Ribha Mehrotra, a member of the team that built the site.

Since sharing items is the key, emphasis was laid on related actions like posting items using Amazon, and an effective keyword/geography search for items to make these tasks as easy as possible. The ease of use by the end user has been the attempt throughout.

?We have used a simple layout, making it easy to find and navigate to different features. Given the nature of the website, we have used ideas from web 2.0 wherever applicable in designing the site like use of AJAX-based techniques, providing a tag cloud built using user-defined tags to browse items, and use of a blog tool to allow users to post their views,? adds Mehrotra.

Another point the team kept in mind was giving the user control to decide who can see what. So, a user can restrict only his friends or community members to see the listed items or profile details, if he so wishes.

From old books and CDs, to discarded toys and tool kits, you can give away or lend anything that no longer holds your fancy. And on top of it, you not only do your bit for the environment but also make new friends. The site today boasts of users from not only India, but also from the US, Canada, Australia, UK, Brazil and Bulgaria.

While SocialWay isn?t the first such site ? there are others like http://www.neighborrow.com started by serial internet entrepreneur Adam Berk ? it certainly fills a gap felt by internet enthusiasts in India. ?I am an avid reader and do not miss an opportunity to log on to this site. I am able to borrow books and that too for free, and also in turn be able to do my bit in reducing the effects of global warming. The site certainly helped me meet many such like-minded people and I also got to discuss about the common books we have read,? says Yashaswini S Kumar in Bangalore.

As a child you were taught to share your stuff with friends. Well, that adage still holds good today, even when your friends have all left town and you are a stranger in a new city. In this networked world of ours, this website has come to the rescue ? to give away, lend or to borrow among friends and strangers and build up a new community of people high on the desire to share.