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1927 – 28 February 1992
The idea: County Librarian Corinne Metz imagined it in 1922: "We may some day have a 'book wagon'" — to piece out, not supplant, the deposit stations. A book wagon served children in the Rolling Mills district in the summer of 1927.
The first wagon: The library bought its first year-round book wagon in September 1929 — an International Harvester chassis with a custom closed body, shelving inside and out, glass weather sides and room for about 1,000 books. Service began in April 1930 to outlying Fort Wayne, run by a young Fred Reynolds and Pearl Coulter under Erdean McCloud. About 2,000 new borrowers registered, circulation topped 17,000 in 1930, and by 1931 the wagon ran five routes with 41 stops.
Depression and war: The library built its own book wagons until 1935, and two large bookmobiles were built with WPA labor in the Depression. A new chassis for county-school service was bid in January 1938 at 924.53 dollars. In 1939 the city bookmobile collection held 21,593 books and the rural collection 64,000 volumes. Service was suspended in the Second World War.
The heyday: Bookmobiles returned after the war, with additions in 1949 and 1951 pushing service past 60 stops, then a cut back to a single unit by 1953, and a rebuild: 209 weekly stops and 198,000 circulation in 1960; six bookmobiles in 1961; a seventh in January 1963 — 250 stops a week. Routes were trimmed from March 1966 as drivers were lost, but in 1971 bookmobiles still lent more than 300,000 volumes a year at 270 stops; Reynolds held that a bookmobile lending 50,000 volumes a year was "the cheapest lending agency there is."
The end: Five bookmobiles ran into the mid-1980s, with nursing-home service added in 1985; three remained by the late 1980s; two were discontinued in the fall of 1990. The last day of bookmobile service was 28 February 1992, ending with driver William Gaunt's retirement. Associate Director Steven C. Fortriede had put the turn plainly in 1990: "It's not so much the bookmobiles' time has ended as it is the branches' time has come."
Sources:
- Slater-Putt, Beyond Books (1995), ch. 4 — the full bookmobile record, Metz's 1922 remark, the 1929 wagon, the WPA builds, the 1963 peak and the 1992 end.