Bookmobile

Bookmobile services and materials (such as Internet access, large print books, and audiobooks), may be customized for the locations and populations served.

[4] Bookmobiles have been based on various means of conveyance, including bicycles, carts, motor vehicles, trains, watercraft, and wagons, as well as camels, donkeys, elephants, horses, and mules.

[7] A Victorian merchant and philanthropist, George Moore, had created the project to "diffuse good literature among the rural population".

[2] This horse-drawn van was operated by the Warrington Mechanics' Institute, which aimed to increase the lending of its books to enthusiastic local patrons.

[13] Meant as a way to reach more library patrons, the annual report for 1902 listed 23 deposit stations, with each being a collection of 50 books in a case that was placed in a store or post office throughout the county.

[16] Although popular, Titcomb realized that even this did not reach the most rural residents, and so she cemented the idea of a "book wagon" in 1905, taking the library materials directly to people's homes in remote parts of the county.

[4][17][7][15][18] After securing a Carnegie gift of $2,500, Titcomb purchased a black Concord wagon and employed the library janitor to drive it.

[20] With the rise of motorized transport in America, a pioneering librarian in 1920 named Sarah Byrd Askew began driving her specially outfitted Model T to provide library books to rural areas in New Jersey.

[21] The automobile remained rare, however, and in Minneapolis, the Hennepin County Public Library operated a horse-drawn book wagon starting in 1922.

[23] At Fairfax County, Virginia, county-wide bookmobile service was begun in 1940, in a truck loaned by the Works Progress Administration (WPA).

[24] The "Library in Action" was a late-1960s bookmobile program in the Bronx, NY, run by interracial staff that brought books to teenagers of color in under-served neighborhoods.