Bookmobiles

A recent study found that making books available to low-income children had a significant impact on preventing the reading gap.

On NPR this morning, W. Ralph Eubanks reminisces about visiting the bookmobile as a child. He is the author of The House at the End of the Road: The Story of Three Generations of an Interracial Family in the American South and Ever Is a Long Time: A Journey Into Mississippi’s Dark Past and Director of Publishing at the Library of Congress.

“When I feel the summer heat steaming from the pavement, my childhood memories of the bookmobile provide a cooling sensation to my spirit. This feeling came back last summer on a visit to Chicago when I happened upon a parade of bookmobiles of various ages. There it was: an old Ford grille with big, round headlights that was a dead ringer for the bookmobile that stopped at my house as a child. ”

More from NPR.

Lafayette Bookstore in CA has had to close its bricks-and-mortar store, but will keep on trucking as the Bay Area Bookmobile.

“Big Blue” is a bookmobile that was decommissioned from the Ypsilanti (MI) District Library and was acquired and driven to the Bay Area during the week of June 20. The store is having a Saying Goodbye to the Brick-and-Mortar Party Thursday evening that will include “a ritual marking our move from the old to the new–we’re doing a bucket brigade to move all the books from the new section of the bookstore into the bookmobile.”

The store will have Lafayette Book Store and Bay Area Bookmobile Facebook pages and continue sending out the newsletter. As owner Dave Simpson wrote: “We’ll be active there with a schedule of appearances, announcements of author signings and events, and as always, our book recommendations (and you can offer your own!). Come join the conversation!”

Cleveland-based digital media vendor Overdrive is taking a “digital bookmobile” on a tour to show off the services Overdrive provides patrons via libraries. The LISTen production team visited the tractor-trailer rig to get some pictures of the traveling show. Clicking on pictures below will take you to larger versions on Flickr. All pictures are by Stephen Michael Kellat, Head Writer of Erie Looking Productions.

A view of the scene taken from Ashtabula City’s North Park

The front façade of Ashtabula County District Library

The parking lot at Ashtabula County District Library was too small for the tractor-trailer rig so parking next door at First Baptist Church of Ashtabula was required.

LISTen producer Gloria Kellat entering the exhibit.

Upon entering you are greeted with a video talking about downloading digital media and the benefits you can gain from that.

The walls were covered with facts and details about libraries and books.

Examples of reading devices to consume Overdrive materials with were on display too.

A video lounge as well as computer terminals to explore content holdings were also found in the trailer. The trailer was making a single day appearance at Ashtabula County District Library.

Photo Montage: Digital Bookmobile by Stephen Michael Kellat is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

USA Today guest blogger Bobby Harrell is a library assistant in Bowling Green, KY, and he -loves- driving the 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.

From Book Patrol: It started innocently enough. Over dinner a friend mentioned that he saw a used bookmobile for sale on Craigslist and wished he could by it. That was all the impetus Tom Corwin needed.

He was soon off to suburban Chicago to buy the decommissioned bookmobile. He paid $7500 for it.

Corwin has already garnered the support of the National Book Foundation, the Association of American Publishers and the American Library Association for the project and has signed a deal with Whitewater Films in Los Angeles for the documentary which will be titled “Behind the Wheel of the Bookmobile.” The film will also include information on the history of bookmobiles.

Authors that have already signed up in support include Michael Chabon, Dave Eggers, Junot Diaz, Tom Robbins and Scott Turow, with many of them to take a turn at the wheel…here they are.

Follow the tour on the website and on Twitter.

The Beverly MA bookmobile is out of commission, but its librarian is not.

The deteriorating vehicle failed inspection two weeks ago, and Linda Caravaggio has been making the rounds in her silver Nissan Sentra, delivering books from her back seat.

“She’s hauling bags around and doing her best,” Library Director Pat Cirone said. “She’s a tremendous librarian who goes above and beyond.”

The bookmobile, a 20-year-old bus that delivers books, tapes and CDs to people who can’t get out to the library, needs tires, brakes and rust repairs. “It wasn’t just one minor thing,” Cirone said. “There’s a list.”

Rough estimates for repairs are $3,000, which will come out of the city’s library budget — not the $70,000 raised so far for a new vehicle, which is expected to cost about $150,000.

The Beverly Public Library has been raising money for a new bookmobile for the past two years. To send a monetary donation, please make checks payable to the Friends of the Beverly Public Library. They can be mailed to the Library at 32 Essex Street, Beverly, MA 01915 or check out the website for more information.

The Voice of America reports about a new sort of bookmobile in Ethiopia. A former children’s librarian in San Francisco, Yohannes Gebregiorgis, has returned to his native land to spread reading with the help of donkeys and carts. Funding is being given by civic groups in the United States to help the effort.

The Digital Bookmobile ( www.digitalbookmobile.com), a traveling community outreach exhibit for public library download services, will kick off a national tour on August 10 in Central Park with The New York Public Library ( http://ebooks.nypl.org). The inaugural event will allow readers of all ages to experience digital audiobook, eBook, music, and video downloads from their public library and immerse themselves in an interactive learning environment. Events are scheduled at Queens Borough Public Library and Brooklyn Public Library in the days following the Central Park launch.

OverDrive, Inc. (www.overdrive.com), a leading distributor of digital books to public libraries, has unveiled drawings and details of a traveling community outreach exhibit entitled the Digital Bookmobile (www.digitalbookmobile.com). Starting in August 2008, the Digital Bookmobile will host hands-on, interactive training events at public libraries in cities around the United States, including Boston, Cleveland, New York City, Phoenix, Seattle, and Washington, DC. Libraries will be encouraged to make the Digital Bookmobile a part of multi-day community events, book fairs, and other reading initiatives.

An Obit from Monroe,MI, for Evelyn Obenchain, the first Monroe County bookmobile driver.

The Monroe woman began working for Monroe County Library System in 1942 and worked for a total of 23 years, most of them as the bookmobile driver. She drove until poor health forced her to stop.