A World of Books
Colleen Lariviere and the Cobleigh Library Bookmobile out of Lyndon, VT.( Cobleigh Library, courtesy Clayton Trutor)
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.
68 VERMONT MAGAZINE