In April 1905, Hagerstown, Maryland, librarian Mary Titcomb decided, “the book goes to the man, not waiting for the man to come to the book.” She packed a wagon full with volumes, put the library janitor at the reins, and embarked on what would be the first bookmobile tour. At first, the public was a little leery—the unusual wagon confused rural citizens, who mistook it for, among other things, the “dead wagon.” Titcomb then painted the wheels and doors a cheery red, and from that point on, the book wagon gave life to the communities it served. Within six months, her meticulous records indicated 1,008 volumes had been distributed to rural families via the wagon, which traveled an average of thirty miles per day.
For five years, Titcomb’s mobile library moved across the county with relative ease. However, in 1910, a collision with a freight train ended the original book wagon’s run. While the driver and the horses survived, the wagon was damaged beyond repair and the traveling library was put on hiatus for a year. When another $2500 was found a year later, the book wagon’s successor was put into service. However, it had an engine.
If one were able to step into a time machine at that time and travel one hundred years later, one might be surprised to learn that the traditional bookmobile still exists, given the amount of “virtual” technology available now. Yet the traditional bookmobile still travels into the community, though its horses have been replaced with horsepower and it carries substantially more materials. What is even more impressive is the way these more current “virtual” technologies have been incorporated into the mobile library in order to serve the needs of a given population. The Memphis/Shelby County Public Library System in Tennessee, for instance, declared the traditional bookmobile format “all but dead” until it was revamped and updated. In 1999, the InfoBUS was put on the road with traditional materials, as well as four Internet-accessible terminals in the form of notebook computers. Notebook computers would not only allow Internet use and training classes to be performed within the bus, but could also be removed and taken into a facility for a presentation or removed from the vehicle as a security measure.
Taking a look at a library system on the other side of the country, one finds another fleet of traveling libraries serving a different population, namely, the senior citizen. King County Library System in Issaquah, Washington, found its senior population tripled between 1990 and 2000, going from an elderly population of 31,405 to 113,965 within ten years, according to the US census. Traveling Library Services (TLC) made its debut in 1979, but more recently the county added Techlab, a smaller, technology-focused information center on wheels, that visits low-income housing projects, senior centers, rehab centers and hospitals across the county. Between 1999 and 2004, it served over 10,000 people, 95 percent of which were seniors. The Techlab bus is equipped with eight laptop computer workstations, a full productivity software suite, broadband Internet access, and a screen projector for group instruction. The Techlab service offers courses in computer and Internet basics, word processing and spreadsheets.
Meeting the needs of an underserved community in Charlotte and Mecklenburg County, North Carolina, meant adapting new technologies to their traditional bookmobile services. While bringing books and story times with their bookmobile like any other mobile library, the bookmobile staff would also unfurl carpets and put out tables to create an impromptu Internet café for patrons. Children could play online games, adults would check their email, and teens could frequent social networking sites. Once the program is completed, the staff packs everything up and heads off to another neighborhood.
While traditional libraries provide the familiar bookmobile service, a different type of organization is providing books on demand. In 2002, Brewster Kahle of The Internet Archive began driving around San Francisco in his Internet Bookmobile, a secondhand Ford Aerostar van equipped with a satellite dish and an on-demand printing system. Kahle would go from neighborhood to neighborhood, his van advertising, “Bookmobile ... Print Your Own Book ... 1,000,000 Books inside (soon) ... archive.org.” Inside the van were a laptop computer, a binding machine and a guillotine paper cutter. Kahle would download the file for the book, which was in the public domain, and bind the book immediately at a cost to him of approximately $1.00-3.00, depending on the size of the book and whether it contained color printing. The technology employed for the printing made it possible to print a professional-quality book within minutes. Kahle’s printer turned out about twenty pages per minute. The printed material was then placed inside a cover and bound using a device that heats the glue applied to the spine of the pages. The binding process was especially well received by children, who were eager to be part of the bookmaking process.
In a similar vein, the Digital Bookmobile tours America as a supplement to the library’s outreach efforts. Libraries host the bookmobile to distribute eBooks, audio books, music and video. The 74-foot tractor-trailer is equipped with broadband Internet-connected PCs, sound systems, and a variety of portable media players. OverDrive, Inc., the Digital Bookmobile’s founding company, has partnered with over 7,500 public libraries to promote that host library’s digital media collection and ‘Virtual Branch’ download website. Within a year of its tour beginning in 2008, the Digital Bookmobile has traveled 18,000 miles and hosted more than 150 events with 25,000 library patrons in twenty-eight states and Canadian provinces.
Even special libraries have had their opportunity to contribute to the ongoing tradition of the bookmobile. In 2001, The International Council of Nurses (ICN) formed a partnership with the Merck Foundation and Elsevier Science, a publisher of scientific reference textbooks, to initiate the ICN Mobile Library, which would bring the most up-to-date knowledge to health workers in developing countries. The project was modeled after the World Health Organization (WHO) Blue Trunk Libraries, a transportable book collection of 100 health texts written for various levels of practitioners which could also be customized for local health concerns. Each ICN Mobile Library consists of about 80 texts, including books, manuals, fact sheets and selected training units. Topics include medical knowledge related to maternal health, HIV/AIDS and sexual transmitted diseases, child health, surgery and anaesthesia, as well as practical knowledge, such as refrigerator maintenance and how to manage supply stores. While the library itself does not employ impressive digital technology such as wireless Internet services or e-books, it does use current protective technologies that enable it to be resistant to moisture, insects and hard knocks indicative of difficult conditions in developing nations. By 2005, the library had brought materials to health workers in rural communities in Ethopia, India, Liberia, Somalia, Sudan, Kenya, Zimbabwe, Tanzania, Swaziland, Botswana, Zambia and Ghana.
The bookmobile first made its mark over a hundred years ago by bringing reading materials from the library to rural farm families in Maryland via a horse and wagon. Mary Titcomb had a vision that grew from sending books in boxes to the general stores and post offices in small towns and villages to taking the library in abbreviated form directly to the patron. Over a century later, the traveling library is still charting a path and adapts for the community it serves. It may even fall outside the domain of the public library. Using the bookmobile concept, librarians and other organizations can adapt mobile library services. With an open, flexible design like this, surely it will be on the road come another hundred years.
For more information on some of the projects mentioned, visit these web sites:
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