Bookmobiles have a proud history of service dating back to the late 1850s, when a horse-drawn collection of books began making the rounds in Cumbria, England. Here in the United States, the first bookmobile is widely attributed to Mary Lemist Titcomb, a librarian in Washington County, Maryland, who in 1905 posited “Would not a Library Wagon, the outward and visible signs of the service for which the Library stood, do much more in cementing friendship?”
For book lovers, bookmobiles are oddly romantic. They seem like dream-machines, very real automobiles rolling through our lives in an almost impossible fashion. Let's read anytime, anywhere as good as possible!
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| The library's first bookmobile, 1927 |
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| A very old library bookmobile of America, ca. 1900s |
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| The Chicago Public Library Bookmobile |
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| Bookmobile of the Los Angeles public library, 1960 |
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| Bookmobile, Eltingville, Staten Island, ca. 1920 |
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| Boston Public Library Bookmobile, 1963 |
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| Bronx Bookmobile, 1938 |
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| Brooklyn bookmobile |
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| Children led astray by the Bronx Traveling Library, Westchester Square branch, New York, ca. 1930s |
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| Framingham Public Library Bookmobile, Mass., 1956 |
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| Jefferson County bookmobile, the first bookmobile in Texas |
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| Library bookmobiles in front of Union Terminal, 1940 |
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| Los Angeles public library bookmobile, 1955 |
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| Missouri State library bookmobile, ca. 1940s |
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| One of the library bookmobiles in Cincinnati, 1948 |
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| Taking the kids to the bookmobile in Columbia Park, 1940 |
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| The first bookmobile in the United States, Washington County, Maryland, 1905 |
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| The LA Public Library’s bookmobile for the sick, 1928 |
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| The library's bookmobile in Cincinnati, Ohio, ca. 1920s |
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| The Library's bookmobile in Sharonville, 1938 |
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| The library's bookmobile in Springdale, 1942 |
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| The Library's bookmobile on Compton Road, Cincinnati, Ohio, 1933 |
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| The New York Public Library, ca. 1950s |
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| This automobile to deliver books to rural readers, Washington County, Md., 1912 |