A World of Books
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.
The inside of“ Dottie”.( Courtesy Clayton Trutor)
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 smallscale 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.
“ 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
70 VERMONT MAGAZINE