Today, right smack in the middle of National Library Week, is National Bookmobile Day! It’s time to celebrate the more than 900 bookmobiles that roam our communities providing essential services to those facing economic, geographic, or physical challenges that prevent them from being able to visit a brick and mortar library.
Bookmobiles have a proud history of service dating back to the late 1850s, when a horse-drawn collection of books began making the rounds in Cumbria, England. Here in the United States, the first bookmobile is widely attributed to Mary Lemist Titcomb, a librarian in Washington County, Maryland, who in 1905 posited “Would not a Library Wagon, the outward and visible signs of the service for which the Library stood, do much more in cementing friendship?”
and of course the bookmobile can take on many forms. Here are a few:
Previous bookmobile love on book patrol:
Build Your Own Bookmobile
“Fun for schools, librarians, kids, adults, and bibliophiles — because you CAN’T make this on an iPad or a Kindle!” is how Bob Staake refers to his 3-D crafty bookmobile. You simply print it out, fold at tabs, apply a little glue and …
The BiebBus: A Mobile Library for the Ages
That’s where the bookmobile or mobile library comes in and this one might just take the cake. The Biebbus was specially designed for the people of the densely populated and difficult to navigate Zaan region of the Amsterdam …
The Argentine Book Tank: Bookmobile for the 21st Century?
The Argentine Book Tank: Bookmobile for the 21st Century? Meet my new hero. Raul Lemesoff, an Argentine art-car artist, has taken a 1979 Ford Falcon that used to belong to the Argentine armed forces and turned into a …
Biblioburro: Bookmobile Hoofs Books to Rural Nooks
Biblioburro: Bookmobile Hoofs Books to Rural Nooks. When hundreds of children in the “abandoned regions” of the Colombian state of Magdalena need reading material, a small fleet of bookmobiles makes an arduous trek to …
The Rebirth of a Bookmobile
That was all the impetus Tom Corwin needed, “By the end of dinner, I had come up with this whole concept of buying the bookmobile myself, and having authors join me, taking turns behind the wheel, and driving across the …
Bookmobile 2.0
Welcome to the all new Digital Bookmobile, the world’s first bookmobile without books. This 18 wheeler is 69 feet long and packed with the latest digital technologies. It was created by Over Drive to be used as an outreach tool …
Bookmobile Heaven
Bookmobile Heaven. Exile Bibliophile has a Flickr set of over 40 vintage Bookmobile photos. All deserving of a spot in the big parking lot in the sky. Another Flickr group Bookmobiles Parnassus on Wheels has more …
Who Needs a Bookmobile?
Here’s the deal: The Seattle Public Library bought this roving library three years ago to serve the various populations that can’t easily get to any of their 25 branches. Day care centers, assisted living facilities and underserved …
The Kenyan Literary Express
The actual Camel Bookmobile made its first run almost a decade ago. Three dromedaries trudged through arid northeastern Kenya near the unstable border with Somalia to bring a library to settlements so remote they had …