News

Bookmobiles have been offering a movable feast of books and materials to communities without traditional libraries for 100 years.

While many libraries are permanent, brick-and-mortar structures, bookmobiles -- in trucks, vans or buses -- serve as traveling branch libraries. Borrowers board bookmobiles year-round, during regularly scheduled hours at stops such as churches, fire halls, municipal buildings and shopping centers.

Twenty-six of Pennsylvania's 67 counties are served by a total of 37 bookmobiles, according to the state's Bookmobile Report of 2003-2004.

Matt Kane, head of state aid to public libraries, Office of Commonwealth Libraries, said eight counties in western Pennsylvania have libraries that offer bookmobile services. Kane, whose agency is part of the state Department of Education, said Allegheny County has four bookmobiles, while Erie and Washington counties each have two.

The region's counties with one operating bookmobile are Westmoreland, Beaver, Butler, Greene and Somerset, he said.

This year, bookmobiles are in the spotlight as the United States marks the centennial of its first bookmobile, known simply as the "book wagon" by those who created it a century ago.

Some sources attribute the book wagon's roots to a 19th-century traveling library in England. In turn, bookmobiles spawned diverse counterparts through the years, including trolleys, boats, trucks, mules, camels and planes, all of which have transported books to readers in distant places.

Americans embarked on an enduring chapter in the joy of reading when Mary Titcomb, the enterprising librarian of the Washington County Free Library, in Hagerstown, Md., scheduled the book wagon's first journey throughout the county in April 1905, according to information posted on the library's Web site.

Titcomb then set in motion the result of her step-by-step efforts toward sending books directly to homes in Washington County's rural areas, where harsh winters made some places inaccessible. Cut off from libraries because of their situation, families in those remote locations had little opportunity to read more than the Hagerstown newspaper.

The librarian advocated the principle of "The book goes to the man, not waiting for the man to come to the book," according to the library's Web site.

Until the book wagon was launched, rotating collections of encased books had been dispatched to distant county towns or villages by horse and wagon, with the library's janitor, Joshua Thomas, holding the reins. The books were temporarily installed in "deposit stations" at regularly frequented sites, including general stores, post offices and schools.

People took books home to their families, then returned them to the driver for depositing in the next community. Deposit stations eventually gave way to reading rooms, forerunners of today's branch libraries.

Titcomb could not deny the system's success in 1904, when boxes of 30 books each were sent to a record 66 deposit stations, the Web site noted. Although they continued to increase, Titcomb still pondered her wish of direct service to rural families.

"The obvious dawned upon us: the question we might have asked first, came," she read, from a paper she had written, "On the Trail of the Book Wagon," presented at a meeting of the American Library Association in June 1909. "Why not have a wagon built expressly for our purpose and send out not only the cases of books, but have the driver call at houses most remote?"

With the approval of the Free Library's board of trustees, Titcomb wasted no time in consulting with wagon makers and jotting down notes for essentials, including sufficient space to hold at least 200 books.

"No better method has ever been devised for reaching the dweller in the country," she wrote in "The Story of The Washington County Free Library." The wagon was outfitted with books displayed on outside shelves and a storage area for cases in the center.

Led by a team of horses, the book wagon covered 16 routes over some 500 square miles, and took four days to reach its farthest destination. Titcomb's "On the Trail of the Book Wagon," chronicled her observations as she accompanied driver Thomas on occasional visits to families living along the byways.

For five years, the book wagon delivered books until it was demolished in August 1910 by a freight train while crossing the Norfolk and Western Railroad track in the village of St. James, Md. The driver, Joshua Thomas, survived.

The service was suspended until 1912, when the Free Library purchased an International Harvester automobile with a well-equipped carriage -- a gift from the library board's treasurer -- and rural visits were restored.

The book wagon had paved the way to further achievements, as did the automobile's capabilities.

Titcomb extolled the success of the first motorized bookmobile in a sequel to her paper presented to the library association: "It has been possible to cover the county more completely and frequently than before. So efficient has this (new) method ... of personal contact with so many people, that numbers of stations in various parts of the county have been abandoned in favor of house-to-house delivery."

Titcomb's efforts contributed to the work of the Center for the Study of Rural Librarianship, a facility for research, publishing, consulting and continuing education. It was established in 1978 by the Department of Library Science at Clarion University of Pennsylvania.

Bernard Vavrek, center director and professor of library science, said bookmobiles comprise a number of the center's interests.

Subjects have included bookmobile services in the United States and overseas; acknowledgment of the International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions and its Round Table on Mobile Libraries; a survey of bookmobile use in Pennsylvania that involved 1,200 respondents; and over the past decade, co-sponsorship of the annual Great American Bookmobile and Outreach Services Conference.

"More than 200 individuals representing 35 states and New Zealand attended last year's conference," Vavrek said. "At least one person from another country comes each year to keep in touch."

The future of bookmobiles depends on social and economic climates down the road, Vavrek noted.

"In places where the population is increasing, there's a positive effect on the bookmobile's role in the community, and purchasing new bookmobiles is less expensive than building more libraries," he said.

Bookmobile services are used throughout western Pennsylvania.

Based in the West End of Pittsburgh, the Bookmobile Center of ACLA (Allegheny County Library Association) Mobile Library Services houses four bookmobiles: three for preschoolers, seniors and in-betweeners, respectively, and one as a spare. Funding comes from the Allegheny Regional Asset District through ACLA.

"Bookmobiles have been providing library service to the county for more than 50 years, and we still visit our sites with bookmobiles," said Alison Baker, operations manager. "But now they're on the road as mobile libraries, each specifically designed for the kind of service it provides."

The preschool program is used widely. It currently visits 43 sites, including Head Start locations and day-care centers, where children and their instructors are visited monthly by an early child development specialist from the Mobile Library staff. The specialist provides a program of songs and stories; afterward, there's time to check out books, videos and music in a special bookmobile designed and stocked to suit the children's interests.

"Your Neighborhood Bookmobile" was "born" on the Fourth of July in 2001 at the Adams Memorial Library, in Latrobe, boyhood home of the late television personality Fred Rogers. The bookmobile was funded by the McFeely-Rogers Foundation.

"The foundation has been very generous," said Tracy Trotter, director of the Adams Memorial Library.

This is the second year of a three-year grant that provides funds for approximately 700 multimedia materials for children per year.

"They'll remain on the bookmobile for three to six months, and after that, be sent to the library," Trotter said.

In Butler County, Kathy Kline, the bookmobile director/coordinator of extension services for the Butler County bookmobile, said bookmobiles bring people together in rural places such as Chicora, Karns City and Slippery Rock in the county's northern tier.

On a recent windy afternoon, the hills were snow-covered , but readers still came to the bookmobile at the Eau Claire fire hall as Kline, driver-clerk Laura Sue Stewart and clerk Lisa Ulrich tended to business.

"You can have these," said 5-year-old Weston Kimmey, of Hillards, handing a visitor two books called "Little Miss Bossy" and "Mr. Grumpy." His mother, Kelli Kimmey, is president of the "Bookmobile Buddies" group.

Gaylene Hillard, of Cherry Valley, checked out mystery novels. She said she raised her children, now teens, in this bookmobile, adding that they did their school assignments from books borrowed here.

Visitor Bob Gibson, who lives in Boyers, said, "I don't read much any more. But Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn -- I sailed down the river with them! I whitewashed the fence with them! They were great."

Kline said the bookmobile is an integral part of the community.

"You'd think that some of these people have known each other for years. But the bookmobile is where they make friends, because their nearest neighbors live five or six miles away from each other," she said.

Beatrice Paul Hirschl is a Pittsburgh freelance writer for the Tribune-Review.

• Most Read
• Most E-mailed
• Latest News