Emerging stories

I have been searching newspaper and magazine archives and come up with some interesting stories involving various Children's Mobile's. the Leicester book bus was apparently almost scrapped in 2000, when the city council wanted to save money by closing some community libraries, and introducing a generic mobile library instead. Library patrons of the various communities, and the book bus, all protested strongly, so the service not only continued, but has recently been given two new replacement vehicles.

It has historically visited City festivals of varying nature, a model railway exhibition giving storytelling sessions with a railway theme, and launched, promoted and delivered parents guides to children's education on behalf of the City council. It attended a new school opening and carnivals. In Pembrokeshire during 2001, a book bus toured schools to find out what sort of books children wanted in local libraries. I do not know what happened to the service after. Going back in time, around mid to late 1990's Scotland had a special bus (Photo above, from Scottish Libraries) that appears to have visited a number of Scottish cities. It is reported to have done a special dyslexia tour but I have not yet found out what has happened to it. In 1992 Anne Sarrag took a her own book bus to Edinburgh, one that she apparently bought and ran privately. The picture that is developing is children's mobile libraries come and go as funding expands and diminishes. This is what I want to invesitigate.