Guest blogger: What’s it like to command a bookmobile?
“It’s been a fast seven months since the Warren County Public Library in Bowling Green, Ky., put me in charge of a 40-foot-long, 30,000-pound Blue Bird bus modified to hold almost 6,000 library items, otherwise known as the Mobile Branch. I got the job after the previous bookmobile library assistant retired last year. I was ready to do something different in the library world. And it’s been awesome ever since.
Did I mention I get to drive this thing? Backing up in the Mobile Branch requires help from a TV monitor piping images from a video camera attached to the back of the bus. And it took a while to get used to turning and slowing down in a bookmobile. But the view out the windows is worth it. My stops take me past near-endless fields of corn and down country roads that curve around the crops.” (via LISNews)
This photograph of the first bookmobile of the Public Library of Cincinnati & Hamilton County was taken in 1927. The library began its bookmobile service to rural schools in 1927 and eventually expanded it to other areas. This photograph measures 5.5” x 7” (13.97 x 17.78 cm).
When a new Emerald Isle bookmobile attendant discovers that the roving library’s 15,000 books have disappeared, he cannot resign from his job until he finds them.
(via The Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh)
I had a Bookmobile sighting yesterday on a ride down to Ocean Beach. I’d heard a lot about them, but was starting to wonder if they really existed.
The painting on the side doesn’t match the Bookmobile I thought it was, apparently, there are a few of these trucks out there. I’m hoping to see the one documentarian Tom Corwin bought to drive around the country and interview regular people about what their favorite book is and how it influenced their lives. I can’t imagine having to pick just one.
Bookmobile
This photograph of a family standing in front of a bookmobile in Cincinnati was taken in 1948. The Public Library of Cincinnati & Hamilton County began its bookmobile service to rural schools in 1927 and eventually expanded it to other areas. This photograph measures 5.5” x 7” (13.97 x 17.78 cm).
Back in my day, the bookmobile was a donkey and all the books were in Spanish.
(via librarianista)
Forsyth County Public Library bookmobile, Winston Salem, NC, 1953.
(Courtesy of the Forsyth County Public Library Photograph Collection)
Emergency personnel tend to the driver of a bookmobile who lost control and overturned the vehicle near Hugh Moore Park in Easton, Pa., April 1988
