UNA NUOVA INIZIATIVA PER LA DIFFUSIONE DEL LIBRO proclaims the title at the top of the photo, or, in English, A New Initiative for Distributing Books.

The early 1920s bookmobile was actually publisher’s method of selling books to the public, not a library’s program to get books to more citizens. Treves, in the photo’s caption, refers to Emilio Treves (1834-1916), the founder, editor, and publisher of L’Illustrazione Italiana. This publisher/bookseller model for book mobiles seems to have been a mostly Italian phenomenon not found here in North America.