Cool Bookmobile Find of the Day: Weapon of Mass Instruction
In Argentina, local artist Raul Lemesoff has transformed an old Ford Falcon into a roving library. He weaves through the streets of Buenos Aires and the rest of the country, offering books to passers-by in the hopes of sparking the country’s appetite for literature. Peace through literature. This is an idea whose time has come.
A list compiled by Daniel S. Burt, a PhD in Literature and for nine years the dean of Wesleyan University
Wouldn’t it be great to read all of these? I think that might be my major goal in life!
So awesome. I loved the Bookmobile…For decades, the Massapequa Library Bookmobile would roll around the Long Island town, spreading literacy and joy, until it broke down last summer, on account of being a 48-year-old trailer long weighed down by books and small children, who are known to jump up and down in excitement. (Bookmobiles are less common than in bygone days of unstructured playtime and greater library patronage, though you’ll still occasionally see a Biblioburro here and there.)
Now, Alec Baldwin, proud son of Nassau County and former Bookmobile patron, has purchased the Bookmobile from the library system.
Baldwin paid $1,000 for the Bookmobile, and had it towed to his home in the Hamptons.
Baldwin “might use it as a playhouse for children, or maybe just an office,” according to the library’s director, Patricia Page. He could not be reached for comment.
via @drmabuse
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
Kalamazoo, Michagan’s Public Library’s bookmobile service, which began in 1956, will be eliminated by June 30 as part of an effort to cut $550,000 from next year’s library budget.
