Posted on April 10, 2019
(Wednesday of National Library Week)
There are some small towns that don't have a big public library. There are some people who don't live in towns - instead, they live on farms or ranches, or in other rural areas. And there are some people who cannot drive to a public library - such as people who are ill or very old.
When people can't get to a library, someone reasoned, then the library might still be able to get to them! And that someone put a whole bunch of books into a vehicle and drove out to become the first bookmobile.
Actually, I'm not sure that anybody knows who ran the first bookmobile, or where, but we do know that some horse-pulled book wagons and other pre-automobile vehicles provided mobile library services in frontier America and Britain. One of the very first kinds of autos, the Model T, was used in at least one place as a kind of bookmobile. 
The most common modern bookmobiles are RVs, buses, or vans customized to transport and display books... 
...but other kinds of cars and trucks, plus bikes, boats, trains, and pack animals have become mobile libraries:
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| Horse libraries in Indonesia... |
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| Elephant libraries in Thailand... |
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| A "floating library" in Norway... |
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| The Camel Mobile Library Service in Kenya... |
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| Biblioburro, a library pulled by burros (donkeys) in Colombia... |
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| Books on Bikes in Seattle, in the U.S.... |
Lots of places have some pretty great bookmobiles!
Of course, many of us can get and read ebooks; people who live in remote areas generally DO have telephones and internet, and they can get much more variety of reading materials, much more quickly, using tablets and e-readers.
But there's something about an actual, physical book - especially for kids, most especially for young kids... 
Many cities and librarians are making sure that bookmobiles have smaller or zero carbon footprints (using hybrid or all-electric vehicles, for example, or even solar-battery vehicles).
Another development in access is the Little Free Library movement, in which people build a teeny house for their front yard, where people can take a book and/or share a book. This could be done in very small rural communities without the expense of building a library, hiring a librarian, or even converting a vehicle into a bookmobiles!Also on this date:
Anniversary of the Statute of Anne
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