I attended a couple of sessions, talked to a lot of vendors and visited a bunch of bookmobiles today. After the usual opening ceremonies (speeches from various mayors, association officials, etc.), Brian and I spend a couple hours this morning talking to vendors. We spoke to a couple of new bookmobile manufacturers. It seems like there are more companies in the game now than there were when we bought our bookmobile. Unfortunately, nearly everyone was negative about alternative fuel bookmobiles. The exchange usually went something like this:
"Do you build alternative fuel bookmobiles?"
"Well. . . We can, but. . ."
It seems like there are still lots of major disadvantages (reliability, generator compatibility, limited availability of models, sacrifice of space) to CNG and other alternative fuel vehicles, but everyone also seemed to feel that things are improving and that in a few years they may be competitive. Currently, it sounds like if you buy a CNG or other alternative fuel bookmobile, you're sort of signing up to be part of the Beta test. Sort of makes me think a refurbishment of our current vehicle might be the way to go. I got the feeling that a really good alternative-fuel bookmobile that can match the current diesel or gasoline models is still 5 or 10 years away.
The first session I attended was "STEM & Early Literacy Activities for Preschool Children." This session was marred by some time-management problems by the presenter. She spent most of the session reading us picture books that she thought could tie into early literacy or science education for children or talking very generally about state education standards, and then quickly mentioned a couple of activities in the last few minutes. The session was probably about 90% book talks and generalities and 10% programming ideas, and I was hoping for more like 80/20 the other way. The activity ideas were pretty simple, but some of them were good. I liked the idea of reading the Pete the Cat version of The Wheels on the Bus to the kids and then using big kid-sized measuring tapes to go outside and measure the wheels of the bookmobile. Giving children egg cartons and encouraging them to create collections of natural things they find was a cute idea, too, but not really an in-library or bookmobile-centered activity. But most of the ideas were on the order of "Read the book
Not a Stick and then ask each kid to go find stick and discuss what they would use it for." Nothing too clever or life-changing.
The second session offered meatier ideas, and they were definitely outreach-centered, but not really tied to the bookmobile. It was called "Read, Play, Make" and the presenter discussed four specific programs her outreach department had done. (By the way, if you're noticing a pattern here, STEAM for young patrons and serving older patrons with dementia seem to be the two big topics here.)
1. Mini Maker Faires (yes, they spelled with an "e")--these were done at three or four of their summer stops at low-income housing complexes. These were specifically not done in conjunction with bookmobile stops because their bookmobile stops were too short. They did sound mostly successful, though. Lots of kids attended and lots of learning happened.
2. Early Literacy Kits--These were designed for families with special-needs and medically fragile children age 0 to 6. These were bags filled with a book or two and some accessories (scarf, shaker egg, flannel board, etc.) along with a pamphlet describing learning activities that could be done with these supplies and a link to Youtube videos the library filmed and posted. Families were given these kits to keep. The idea was that parents who have children with severe medical problems have to focus so much time and energy on managing their children's health that learning is often hard to prioritize. These kits were designed to be taken anywhere, so that even if the child is in the hospital, the parent will have some easily accessible learning activities at hand. A nice idea, and definitely under the umbrella of outreach, but not really bookmobile-related.
3. Family Craft Kits--Aimed at children age 8+ and their families, each craft kit is a box of supplies and instructions to make a craft project. The idea is that a child would borrow one from the bookmobile and take it home to do a craft project with their parents and siblings, offering a take-home experience that is normally only offered in the library. Supplies are replenished after each use. Rather than check them out, this library notes the child's name and location where the kit was borrowed, and they count use as programming statistics rather than circulation. They specifically don't loan these at schools because they're worried they'd never make it home intact.
4. Read for Fun Backpacks--these are kits given (permanently) to first and second graders at a low-income school in an unincorporated county area with no library branch. The inexpensive string bag backpacks contain two fiction books, one nonfiction book, a workbook with language activities related to the books and a pencil. These are distributed at the end of the school year and are designed to combat "summer slide"--the loss of reading skills by students who don't read over summer vacation. They targeted this specific school because, due to its low-income status they felt that students were less likely to have books at home and because it's located in an unincorporated area of the county with not much library access.
These were good and substantial ideas, but might not be relevant to our school-based bookmobile service. They are also fairly expensive, since most involve giving rather than loaning items to patrons.
After our second session, we went outside to see several bookmobiles on display. Unfortunately, most of the vehicular attendees are small Sprinter vans. We did see a nice new truck from Geuga County, built by a manufacturer I hadn't heard of--LDV, Inc.
Another notable vehicle was the Boone County Community Center on Wheels. This was a 40-foot bus divided in half inside. The front half was a bookmobile and the back half was a small storytime room. Another interesting feature of this bus was the cabinets they'd built around the wheelchair lift, so that the area around it wasn't wasted space.
Another development worth mentioning--Winnebago is selling commercial chassis and bodies to bookmobile manufacturers, and they are able to add slide-outs, like you see on many motor homes. It's a nice way to add some extra space in your bookmobile's interior. You can sort of see the slide-out below:
So that was pretty much it for the first day. Looking forward to more tomorrow.
