A World of Books
- Clayton Trutor
- 1 day ago
- 10 min read
The Bookmobile was a Major Source of Reading Material in Rural Vermont. It Remains a Vital Resource in a Handful of Communities
STORY BY CLAYTON TRUTOR
For Vermonters of a certain age, particularly those in the state’s most rural regions, the Bookmobile was their window to the world. Between 1922 and 1974, vans with library stacks in the back brought reading materials to communities across the state. Patrons entered through the front door and selected books from the ceiling to floor shelves. They checked them out with the help of the driver/librarian at a desk in the back and exited through a rear door. Visits from the bookmobile punctuated the calendars at small town schools, where children waited anxiously for their arrival. Bookmobiles served adult patrons, as well, on regular stops across the state, providing service to citizens in towns without a library or with limited access to a library.
In addition, bookmobiles dropped off collections of as many as 1,000 books at a time at small town libraries. These deposits sometimes doubled the number of titles available in rural communities.
“For something over half a century, the bookmobile has been a picturesque part of the country scene. It has parked in the shade of a big tree on a bright summer day while happy children and adults browse through its shelves and borrowed books to be read later on a vine-walled porch or in a shady side-yard hammock,” wrote Gerald Raftery of the Bennington Banner in March 1972. Less than two years after Raferty’s column, the official Vermont Bookmobile program ended abruptly.
However, more than five decades later, a handful of communities in Vermont still offer the service thanks entirely to local efforts.
The Vermont Book Wagon
In 1922, Vermont became the first New England state to support a bookmobile. At the time, it was known as the “Vermont Book Wagon”. The term “Bookmobile” did not become commonplace in Vermont until the 1930s. The Vermont Federation of Women’s Clubs provided financial support for the vehicle, a Dodge truck with special fittings in the back.
The Free Public Library Service (FPLS) of Vermont, a state agency created in 1894 to support local libraries, operated the Bookmobile for most of its history. The FPLS operated the state’s regional library system as well as interlibrary loan in Vermont. The state’s regional libraries in Rutland, St. Albans, Brattleboro, Montpelier, and St. Johnsbury served as the starting point for bookmobile journeys.
By 1924, the Vermont Book Wagon supplied books directly to 146 Vermont communities. Fifty of those communities had no library service whatsoever before the Book Wagon.
The backstory to the Vermont bookmobile actually begins in 1901. At that time, Rutland city librarian Mary Titcomb started advocating for traveling libraries across the state. Unable to gain state support for the program, Titcomb relocated to Maryland. In Hagerstown, Maryland, Titcomb inaugurated the country’s first bookmobile program in 1905. Initially, she brought it around by horse-and-buggy but soon procured an automobile. Within a few years, the idea caught on in other states. Bookmobiles became particularly popular in the rural Midwest, where they served as connective tissue between the region’s faraway outposts and the rest of the culture. Years later, Vermont caught on to the concept. It became an overnight fixture of life in the Green Mountain State. The Bookmobile’s first great hurrah came in Summer 1922. Helen Richards of the State Library Commission drove the Book Wagon down to Rutland County in August 1922 for an extended visit. She made stops in every town in the county and introduced the program to residents at meetings at several Rutland County Grange Halls. Many of the people she encountered told her they had never met a librarian. For as long as the weather allowed, Richards brought the Book Wagon to dozens of additional towns in all corners of the state.
“The Book Wagon’s arrival is a great event in the lives of the people of these communities. The sound of its approach having brought the family from the fields, the barns, and the houses,” wrote an editorialist for the Bennington Banner in March 1923, not long after the service’s inauguration.
Dime banks appeared in libraries across Vermont during the 1920s to help support the Book Wagon program.
Newspaper and radio announcements of its schedule became the norm in many communities. From the outset, Book Wagons focused heavily on encouraging childhood literacy. The lower shelves were filled with picture books. Eventually, other forms of media, such as musical recordings on LP, made it onto Bookmobile shelves.
For years, residents in the town of Shaftsbury greeted bookmobile drivers with a hot breakfast as thanks for their service to the community.
“The Massachusetts Club women now plan to run bookmobiles into rural areas themselves. When haughty Boston decides to imitate Vermont, the time is ripe to sing the song that Johnny Burgoyne’s men used to bellow so lustily on the shores of Lake Champlain: ‘The World Turned Upside Down,’” wrote an unnamed editorialist for the Burlington Daily News in 1937.
The Bookmobile Program Expands
In the midst of the Great Depression, the now-Vermont Bookmobile program expanded considerably, thanks to support from the federal Works Progress Administration (WPA), a New Deal agency that provided employment to millions of Americans in public works projects.
Nationally, the WPA helped create more than 200 bookmobile services around the country. In Vermont, it built on to an existing program. By the early 1940s, each of the state’s five regional libraries had an operating bookmobile of its own, thanks in large part to the support of the WPA. WPA employees operated and maintained bookmobiles in every region of the state. They repaired 25,000 damaged FPLS volumes and got them back into circulation. WPA employees in Vermont translated hundreds of titles into braille for blind patrons.
The late 1950s and 1960s were probably the high point for the Vermont Bookmobile.
In 1957, federal support from the Library Services Act enabled the state to purchase a new fleet of bookmobiles. For most of the 1960s, the state’s five regional libraries in Rutland, St. Albans, Brattleboro, Montpelier, and St. Johnsbury maintained two bookmobiles each. Strong federal and state backing enabled the FPLS to outfit all its Bookmobiles with large collections. Typically, a Vermont Bookmobile carried 2,500 titles each time it went out for a run.
Barry Trutor grew up in Benson during the heyday of the Vermont Bookmobile. He remembers fondly the arrival of the bookmobile at his four-room schoolhouse in the late 1950s and early 1960s. Benson had a small library of its own, but the regular visits of the bookmobile augmented his reading options considerably.
“There was much anticipation with the bookmobile coming,” Trutor said, remembering how he and his classmates would lineup for their crack at the stacks. He remembers putting on winter clothing and heading out the school’s double doors on many cold mornings.
“The anticipation was maybe second to Christmas,” he said. “Every shelf had a surprise on it.” At the time, Trutor’s reading interests skewed toward books about hot rods and adventure stories.
“It looked just like a standard library with wooden or metal shelves. There weren’t any seats on the bus, just a pathway down the middle, You went in one end of the bus and left through the other,” Trutor said.
A Challenge to the Bookmobile
Margaret Mead once wrote that one should never doubt the ability of a small group of committed people to change the world, or something along those lines. In the case of the Vermont Bookmobile, the efforts of just one highly committed and influential state administrator brought the program to an end.
In 1970, the State Library merged with the FPLS to form the Vermont Department of Libraries. Vermont law gave the new department complete sovereignty over the bookmobile program, including whether or not to continue to offer it.
In 1973, Vermont State Librarian James Igoe issued a report asserting that the bookmobile was an expensive and inefficient way to distribute books. He conceded that it was wildly popular among schoolchildren, but little used by adults. In 1972, just 489 Vermont adults had checked out books from a Bookmobile. He wrote that regional library staff expressed concern that bookmobile service hurt local initiatives in small towns to support their own libraries.
Moreover, Igoe questioned how much children got out of their visits on the Bookmobile.
“If the children came on the vehicle at all, it was a hurried, very brief experience of a few minutes. It was probably more frustrating than educational,” according to Igoe in his report.
As an alternative, Igoe piloted the “Bookfetch” program in which state residents received a mail-order catalog four-times-per-year with books available to borrow. Patrons would return a postage free card and have up to three books mailed to them free of charge. Igoe began a small-scale version of the program in Washington County, which he trumpeted as a great success.
Republican State Senator Stoyan Christowe of West Dover led the charge to save the Bookmobile. Christowe had once served as chairman of the State Library Board. In 1973, Christowe decried the “high-handed, high-level change” being instituted by Igoe. Christowe’s home of Windham County housed a regional library in Brattleboro and had been enthusiastic in its support for the Bookmobile since Helen Richards’ first Bookmobile forays back in 1922. “If the bookmobile program is eliminated, rural town libraries will be crippled. The small towns and schools need the bookmobile if they are to continue to provide any effective type of library service,” Christowe told the Bennington Banner in 1973.
Christowe introduced legislation to require the state to continue the bookmobile program, but it never got any traction.
In 1973, Igoe persuaded the State Library Board to vote to end the Bookmobile program the following year.
At the time, Igoe was roughly as popular in Windham County as Dodgers owner Walter O’Malley was in Brooklyn during the 1950s after he relocated the team to Southern California.
“Igoe is a quick talking young man who spouts statistics with such vehemence that the image of perusing a book is lost in the mathematics,” wrote Cora Cheney of the Brattleboro Reformer in February 1972.
“You feel that democracy doesn’t count anymore. I feel like I’m attending my funeral. The bookmobile is dead. So is the voice of the people,” wrote Francis S. Bond, Trustee of the Dover Free Library, in a 1973 letter to the editor of the Bennington Banner.
In 1973, the town of Townshend’s library directors sent Christowe a letter explaining that the elimination of bookmobiles would wipe out rural libraries. More than half the books checked out in Townshend that year came from the bookmobile. Patrons in Townshend reported to Christowe that a title borrowed from the bookmobile would circulate informally in town until it was time to be returned.
Less than a year after eliminating the Bookmobile, Igoe left his position in Vermont to become Hawaii’s state librarian. “Bookfetch” never took off and ceased operations in the late 1970s.
The Bookmobile Today
Local support in many communities has kept small town libraries going, even if they are open for just a few hours a week.
It took nearly a quarter century for bookmobile service of any kind to restart in Vermont. For a time, Vermont was the only state in the country that did not have an active bookmobile. Federal support during the late 1990s helped kickstart a number of bookmobile programs across the state.
In the early 2000s, as many as ten bookmobiles ran regular local routes. Once federal support dried up, so did most of the neo-bookmobiles. Now, just a handful remain in operation.
“We think of our bookmobile as an extension of our physical library and the collection here,” said Sarah Hibbeler, outreach librarian for the Dorothy Ailing Memorial Library, the public library for the town of Williston. She is the driver and librarian on “Dottie,” the bookmobile operated by the Ailing Library.
“Dottie” offers year-round bookmobile service and is supported as part of the town’s library budget.
Hibbeler’s regular route includes independent senior living communities in St. George and Williston as well as pre-schools and childcare centers in those communities.
“We are so lucky in Williston that this town has supported bookmobile service in some form or another for 25 years. And the town continues to increase its commitment,” Hibbeler said.
The bookmobile makes appearances at special events throughout the year, including “Touch-a-Truck” and “Trunk or Treat.”
“We have prizes on board, and we really try to make it an exciting destination for them,” Hibbeler said of Dottie’s appeal to children. Dottie’s collection includes lots of picture books. as well as seasonal titles aimed at schoolchildren.
“When we head to the childcare centers, we have a musical horn that we play when we arrive. Often, kids are outside in the playground. They get really excited when they hear the musical horn,” Hibbeler said. Bookmobile visits often include story time, as well as an opportunity to check out books.
Dottie follows a regular summer route with neighborhood stops throughout Williston and St. George. To ensure broad accessibility, the bus has a lift for patrons to get on and off the vehicle and book carts that can be rolled into a facility.
“We had more than 2,000 people visit us on Dottie this last summer,” Hibbeler said.
“A large part of the collection is what I call a recreational reading collection. For adults, we always try to get the hot summer titles with an emphasis on popular fiction,” Hibbeler said.
Cobleigh Library in Lyndon began its bookmobile service in the early 2000s. From Monday through Thursday, Cobleigh bookmobile driver Colleen Lariviere hits three to five locations in the towns of Lyndon, Sheffield, and Burke.
“Colleen has been a driver for eight years. Every day she has a different set of local daycares or schools or community groups that she visits,” said Kaitlin Wood, director of the Cobleigh Library. Most of the books in their bookmobile collection are for children. Sometimes, Lariviere brings books inside into the building. Other times, people come on board the bookmobile.
“Patrons can request books to be brought onto the bookmobile that are part of the library’s collection,” said Wood. Visits to younger readers typically include a story time.
“Colleen does a nice job of tailoring her story times to what the kids are studying or are interested in at the time,” Wood said. “If she’s going to a school, teachers can request to have her bring a certain kind of topic,” she continued. On some weekdays, Lariviere provides books to as many as 200 children.
The Cobleigh bookmobile is supported entirely by donations and contributions from endowments. Recently, a coin drop in Lyndonville raised $2,100 for the Cobleigh bookmobile.
Cobleigh trustee Bruce Starbuck does repairs to their bookmobile, free of charge.
Both outreach librarians (Hibbeler and Wood) agree that their work has been on the rise since the pandemic, as patrons seek ways to access resources in non-traditional ways.
“There are lots of librarians around the state who go out into the community with books and deliver them. It might not look like a ‘Dottie’ or a full-service little library on wheels, but people should let libraries know that they value outreach services,” Hibbeler said.
While the heyday of the Vermont Bookmobile is long gone, Vermonters in a handful of communities still benefit greatly from this unique form of library outreach.