Leicester bookbus

I have now spent a morning and an extended afternoon on the Leicester bookbus. The promotional work at a primary school on Monday morning stirred up some interest with the children, because when it visited the school at home time on Tuesday (a regular, weekly stop) there were several new customers all keen to join and borrow books. The staff have developed a rapport with their regular customers out on the streets of Leicester. Many of the children I spoke to were very enthusiastic about the service and would not have borrowed books from anywhere else. Parents and children alike said that the chance to borrow books helped them with their reading skills.

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.

I'm up to M now.

Haringay have two children's mobiles, but it was really difficult to find out about them. The main information was on a pdf of a children's library services leaflet. Anyway, one is a toy library and surestart book bus, and the other is a Baby bus! Hertfordshire has a School library service mobile that visits schools termly, as does the one in the Isle of Wight. Leicester City also has two Book Buses, one specifically for underfives, that visit the outer estates of Leicester. Their service has been running for the past 27 years and appears to be the oldest in the country. They have a pageful of information on the website which seems to show the pride and success they have in the service. This would be a good service to investigate further.

I was dissappointed with the county of Leicestershire, because although I knew that they had a school library service mobile library last year, (I applied for a job in the School library service, but didn't get it) there is no mention of it at all on their website. Presumabley it is yet another one that has bitten the dust. Lincolnshire has a school library service van and Manchester has the elegantly named Reading Voyager. Merthyr Tydfil wins the prize for being the most interseting and informative website. It does not have a specific children's mobile library, but the "normal" mobile library has one day a week devoted to visiting schools. Some insightful person has asked the child customers what they think of the service, and has posted all their comments as a justifcation of it. This again seems to merit further examination.