I heard about the Mobile Library Service about two years ago, but today was the first time I made a point to catch it when it rolled into our village this afternoon. Despite being on a pretty tight schedule with fourteen stops in his day, Peter, the guardian of the traveling book van was happy to answer my questions about possible cuts to library services in Cornwall and the impact for readers.
It looks as the five library vans in Cornwall are safe for this year, but after hearing how few people are actually taking advantage of the mobile service, even I might be tempted to agree that money spent on mobile libraries might be better used in support of some other library needs, unless we can raise awareness and increase use.
There are loads of good choices in the van and I left with four books. I could have checked out eighteen, but I need to balance my reading time with my writing and don’t need the distraction of a good book staring at me. The van will be back in two weeks and between now and then I hope to encourage a few local folks to meet me then for a book date.
This little Miss meets the book van every two weeks so I’m sure I will be seeing her there again.
How about you, are you or members of your family using the library services where you live? I’d also be interested to know if there’s a mobile library in your community and if you’ve had a chance to use it.
Gifts Of The Journey 
We have a library in our huge village and another in the next town about 1 mile and a bit away.. we are the moment in big big danger of losing it .. we have lots of families here and old people .. that use it .. the library is nex to the school a facility hall .. All due to the cuts .. and because it is a village .. A village which they want to expand too!!
Ooops very pleased to read that this service is still going .. I hope it manages to continue 🙂
My family uses the library regularly. When my children, who are now teenagers, turned 5 years old, they got their very own library card so that they could check out their own books. The fact is, we own very few books because our library is such a great resource.
We have a mobile library, but it doesn’t come to our area. Even if it did, I think I would still choose to go to the actual building. To me, there is something marvelous about walking into the library filled with all sorts of materials.
The bookmobile! I remember it from my days in rural Cumberland County, NJ. Our school had no library, so the arrival of the bookmobile was a huge treat. As I recall it also ran an abbreviated schedule in at least some of the summers, so we could ride our bikes to the school and pick out new reading material.
A friend of mine spent a month or so in Africa running a “bookmobile” — a donkey cart filled with books. She was a librarian by trade and she solicited children’s books from all of us to take with her.
Yes our library has a mobile library but I don’t use it as there are many branches of the library and I stop at 4 of them regularly. I love to read and because I was just giving away books except my favorites, I stopped buying books mostly about 6 yeaars ago and always seem to have about 10 checked out, plus audio books for in the car. I do a lot of driving! Plus now I am collecting books on my Nook (like the Kindle) for when I travel so I don’t have to carry so many books with me! Barnes and Noble has lots of inexpensive books for the Nook plus they give one away on Fridays! Starting in January my library also now has books to lend for my Nook!
Oh I hope they never do away with the traveling library vans for folk far away from town – I recall one in our neighborhood after WWII, along with the fabulous ‘fish and chip’ van which always came on Friday evenings! Funny that, now I think of it, because there were no Catholics that I knew of – guess even we Church of England souls enjoyed our fish from the traveling ‘chippy’ once a week!
Love the pic of the little girl – that’s the age when all children need to start being exposed to books, then loving and reading constantly!