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Wednesday, April 11, 2012

The Wheels on the Bookmobile Go Round and Round

Happy National Bookmobile Day! Bookmobiles have been around since at least the early 1900s. (Click here for a more detailed history.) Take a gander at these Mississippi bookmobiles.

This book truck was used from 1923 - 1925 by the Carnegie Public Library in Clarksdale. The library bought it for $125. It was "the first of its kind in Mississippi and the third in the South" (p 74).


It has books and it's mobile! Back in the 1930s, patrons in Oktibbeha County got to visit with the library mule in addition to choosing which book to check out:


This snazzy book van was used by the Mississippi Library Commission back in the day:



I'm in awe of these stylish, traveling WPA library ladies. I wonder which Mississippi hamlet they're visiting in the photo:


This "modern bookmobile" was a service of the Hattiesburg Public Library in the mid-70s:


By the way, did you know that there are still operational bookmobiles in Mississippi? Both Lee-Itawamba Library System and First Regional Library have services that bring books into their communities. Now that's service!


Peebles, Margarete and J.B. Howell. A History of Mississippi Libraries. Montgomery, AL: Paragon Press, 1975.

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