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[Steve]

Bookmobiles Now Offer Internet Access

Pamela Mendels
NY Times 6/10/98


The bookmobile for the Burlington County Library in southern New
Jersey offers patrons an ever-changing collection of about 4,500
books, videocassettes and other materials. 

This month, assuming all goes according to plan, the big white
vehicle with royal blue trim and a wheelchair lift will also be
offering access to the Internet. 

And in doing so, it will join a small but growing number of those
venerable, if lumbering, libraries-on-wheels that have either
already gone cyber or expect to do so soon. 

"Essentially the same sort of services provided in the library,
bookmobiles are trying to provide on the road," said Bernard F.
Vavrek, a professor of library science at Clarion University in
Clarion, Pa., and director of the Center for the Study of Rural
Librarianship. 

Many of the bookmobiles that have gone online have done so primarily
to make operations run more efficiently for the peripatetic
librarians and their patrons, by connecting them electronically to
the innards of the stationary library's computer systems. Others
also hope to allow patrons who depend exclusively on the bookmobile
(and therefore might not be able to use a conventional library's
online resources) to get a chance to see what the Internet is like. 

Vavrek could not say exactly how many bookmobiles have gone online.
Of the roughly 900 library systems in the country that have
bookmobiles, he estimated that "less than 100" have some sort of
electronic connection so far. 

But, he added, he believes that number is growing, as evidenced by
much active interest in the subject recently on a bookmobile
listserv maintained at Clarion. 

Among the institutions with plans to put their bookmobiles online
shortly are libraries in Montgomery County and Chester County, both
outside Philadelphia. 

One of the old-timers in the field is the bookmobile operated by the
Newark Public Library in Ohio which has been online using cellular
telephone technology for almost two years. The system, which
displays text only, is used mainly by librarians for electronic
checking in and checking out, said Wilma J. Lepore, director of the
Newark Public Library, which serves an area about 45 miles east of
Columbus. 

Among the bookmobiles that have gone digital and offer graphics as
well as text are two -- one for children, one for senior citizens --
run by the San Francisco Public Library. Last month, the vehicles,
each equipped with a laptop computer and wireless technology,
launched their online services. Librarians in the vehicles now can
connect to the library's internal computer system and do such things
as put books on reserve for bookmobile patrons. 

They also can conduct Web searches for patrons and, if time permits,
allow visitors to do some surfing themselves, said Karen S. Buntin,
children's bookmobile librarian. Buntin recently performed a
bookmobile Web search for a teacher looking for magazines about
pre-school education. 

In Burlington County, the bookmobile is expected to be equipped with
two laptops and a personal computer, according to Sarah C. Thompson,
bookmobile supervising librarian. She is hoping that will mean
equipment enough for patrons to do their own Web searches. There
will be one big constraint, however: time. The bookmobile visits 53
different stops over a two-week period, so there will be little
opportunity for patrons at any stop along the way to spend hours
surfing. 

But Thompson is hoping the Internet access, which is being paid for
by a $15,000 grant from Bell Atlantic New Jersey, will prove
especially helpful to the 40 percent of Burlington County bookmobile
patrons who live in the retirement communities of southern New
Jersey. "We plan to go to these places and do introductory demos on
computer systems," she said. 

Copyright 1998 The New York Times Company 



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