“ 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.
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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.
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