Snapshot: Pawtucket Bookmobile

Photo by Wolf Matthewson

WITH A FLASH OF RED AND A RUMBLING OF TIRES, the Pawtucket Public Library Bookmobile rolls up outside Agnes E. Little Elementary School. Pawtucket’s Bookmobile has served the city since 1968, when the library purchased a Creamsicle-hued Gerstenslager truck for $16,000. Today’s Bookmobile was custom-built by Moroney Monolite Bookmobiles of Worcester, Massachusetts, in 2006, and carries up to 2,500 books and other materials to patrons at schools, housing complexes and parks each week. (You can find its schedule at pawtucketlibrary.org.) “Bookmobiles are usually more common in large county library systems throughout the U.S. where libraries and their branches may be geographically much further apart than they are here in our little state of Rhode Island,” explains Christine Jeffers, assistant library director. While the American Library Association estimates about 671 bookmobiles remain around the country, Pawtucket for many years operated the only year-round one in the state. (Community Libraries of Providence launched its Readmobile last summer.) For patrons, the Bookmobile represents a throwback to a simpler time, when books were delivered by roaming librarians and streetgoers convened around neighborhood stops. “So often we hear, ‘I used to come to the Bookmobile when I was little and now I’m bringing my grandchildren,’” Jeffers says. “It’s more than just books. It’s about community, too.”