Does anyone remember Bookmobiles? My first encounter was in grade school in the 50's. It used to drive up to the side door of the school. Probably looked like this one from 1956, although I can't picture the vehicle in my mind. I remember checking out all the Sherlock Holmes books.
"The British Workman, a monthly periodical, reported in 1857 about a horse drawn "perambulating library" operating in a circle of eight villages, in Cumbria (a non-metropolitan county in North West England). Merchant and philanthropist, George Moore, had created the project to 'diffuse good literature among the rural population'." Sketch of a perambulating library in 1859
My little town didn't have a library but the bookmobile came once a week from, I think, the Stephenson Library, a few miles away. It didn't go door-to-door, though. It stopped at the school. I didn't think of it at the time but no one ever asked for library cards. You picked a book or two and brought them back the next week. Maybe the school guaranteed returns.
The Bayou Bookmobile "In 1940, the parish of Terrebonne, Louisiana, launched its first bookmobile, partially-funded by the Works Progress Administration. The Terrebonne Parish Library used a truck to reach people living along the bayous. Roads there were so scarce that the mostly Cajun population often could only reach the bookmobile stops using skiffs or flat-bottom boats. One librarian described such a stop in the January 1, 1941 issue of Library Journal:. 'We seem to stop in an abandoned place, but on looking across the bayou, you can see a small house with a palmetteoed roof. On hearing the horn of the bookmobile, the whole family comes forth, rows across and gets books'.”
Weapons of Mass Instruction "Argentinian artist Raul Lemesoff drives around cities and rural areas in a tank he made himself, using books instead of bullets to liberate people from illiteracy. Called ‘Weapons of Mass Instruction’, the tank was fashioned out of a 1979 Ford Falcon and filled with 900 books."
Pack Horse Librarians "The Pack Horse Library initiative, which sent librarians deep into Appalachia, was one of the New Deal’s most unique plans. The project, as implemented by the Works Progress Administration (WPA), distributed reading material to the people who lived in the craggy, 10,000-square-mile portion of eastern Kentucky. The pay was $28 a month. Each woman was required to supply her own horse or mule, their food and boarding. The Pack Horse Library ended in 1943 after Franklin Roosevelt ordered the end of the WPA, but by 1946, motorized bookmobiles were on the move. "