The library lady

Thu, 03/27/2008 - 14:59 — nbruce

At the coffee shop today Tina, the counter clerk who loves "true crime" books and often tells me about her latest read, told me about a program of the Columbus Metropolitan Library. Perhaps other large cities have this as part of the bookmobile feature, but I wasn't familiar with it. Tina was visiting her friend who has a daycare in her home, 6 children, two shifts. She can't get to the library, so the library comes to her. A van driver brings a package of selected, age appropriate books to her home and she selects what she needs and the items are recorded. The library staff person also drops off used, donated children's books for the daycare provider to keep.

Tina said the children in the home get so excited when "the library lady" comes, and she thinks it's building interest in reading.

This reminds me a bit of a service my mother told me about when she attended a rural, one-room school in Illinois in the 1920s. The state library provided the schools with rotating boxed collections of books which would stay at the school for awhile and the children could use them, then they would be moved to a different school.

Tina is currently reading The devil in the White City which I recommended. It may be the only (and last) true crime book I ever read, but it sure is a spell binder and great history of Chicago and the 1890s. Her enthusiasm for reading and libraries is refreshing.

I noticed when I previewed this the entry box says I posted it on Dec. 31, 1969, which would make me 30 years old again with 2 babies.

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Comments

Fri, 03/28/2008 - 12:19 — Kristen (not verified)

Bookmobile by mail

I work at a state library and we provide a similar service to nursing homes around the state. We mail them boxes of 10 or 20 large print books at a time. They select the exact qty and tell us x number of romances, x number of westerns, etc. After 8 weeks, they return them for a new batch. Large print is so expensive that some of the more rural, low-revenue public libraries borrow from us as well. We pay the postage to ship; they pay to return. It's a very popular service.

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Fri, 03/28/2008 - 18:16 — mdoneil

Brilliant services

These are brilliant services, and they cost so little to implement.

The disposition of the extra used but not useless childrens books is also commendable.

When I was at the PL we had a volunteer who would take a number of large print books, and audiobooks to a local retirement/nursing home community. We did lose a few items from the recordings from time to time, but in the overall scheme of things having to replace a few CDs or tapes from a vendor is not that big of a deal. Three hours a week for a library assistant kept 40-50 patrons supplied with books.