A travelling library often used to provide books to villages and city suburbs that had no library buildings, the bookmobile went from a simple horse-drawn cart in the 19th century to large customised vehicles that became part of American culture and reached their height of popularity in the mid-twentieth century. Let’s take a little trip down memory lane with this forgotten four-wheeler...
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| A horse-drawn cart in Washington in the 1900s. It was one of the first American bookmobiles, built in 1905, but was hit and destroyed by a train in 1910. |
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| A bookmobile in Indonesia, early 20th century. |
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| A bookmobile in Indonesia, early 20th century. |
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| The Book Caravan, one of the first traveling bookshops, 1920. |
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| Books free for everybody, right at the door – if you vote "yes" |
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| An opened bookmobile, 1925 |
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| Multnomah County Library, 1926 |
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| Book Caravan in Iowa, c.1927 |
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| The first bookmobile of the Public Library of Cincinnati, c. 1927. |
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| Rockville Fair, Maryland, 1928 |
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| Three of the bookmobile staff, c.1930 |
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| The Library’s bookmobile on Compton Road, c.1933 |
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| Greensboro, North Carolina, 1936 |
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| The Library’s bookmobile in Sharonville, circa 1938 |
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| A circulating library in a streetcar in Munich, Germany |
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| A tram in Berlin with 2400 books in Berlin, 1952 |
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| Framingham Public Library, 1956 |
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| A mobile library in Canterbury |
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| A Czech book truck |
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| Inside a bookmobile, c.1960s |
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| An impatient queue for a Dutch bookmobile |
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| A Boston Public Library bookmobile, 1963 |
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| A bus with a view, 1967 |
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| Onboard the Connecticut State Library’s Bookmobile with Margaret Sullivan and Marcella Finan, 1967. |
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| The bookmobile of Providence Public Library, 1967 |
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| Utah State Library Bookmobile on the Road, c.1970 |
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| A mobile library in Kurdistan, Iran, 1970 |
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| Bookmobile at Anne Arundel County Fair, 1973. |
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| Paul Buttars, former manager of the Utah State Library Bookmobile Program, in one of the “older” bookmobiles. Taken in Chesterfield, UT, c.1975. |
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| The Bicentennial Bookmobile in Utah, 1976 |
(via
Messy Nessy Chic)
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