Saturday, August 04, 2007

Mule-bile libraries...wait that sounds bad


As I mentioned back in my ALA posts, I went to a session on bookmobiles -- and I just can't get the idea out of my head. I really think Oklahoma needs a lot more of them. As I was driving home yesterday I tried to imagine an ecofriendly bookmobile -- perhaps a compact one attached as a side car to a motorcycle. The side car could fold out and reveal the top 50 books of the week and have a laptop with wifi. Yeah it's cheezy and would require the driver to wear goggles, a scarf, and knee high boots -- but it would be cute, yes?

Well Boing Boing pionts to a story over at the BBC which is just as cool and doesn't require the scarf:
A university in Venezuela is using a novel method to take books into remote communities and encourage people to read. As James Ingham reports, the scheme is proving a great success.

Chiquito and Cenizo greet me with a bit of a snort and a flick of the tail.

Mules are too tough to bother being sweet. They do a hard job which no other animal or human invention can do as well.

But these mules are rather special.

They are known as bibliomulas (book mules) and they are helping to spread the benefits of reading to people who are isolated from much of the world around them.

My trek started from the Valley of Momboy in Trujillo, one of Venezuela's three Andean states.

These are the foothills of the Andes but they are high enough, especially when you are walking. ...

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

I love bookmobiles and think that driving/riding/navigating one might be my true calling in life! Great little post!

Anonymous said...

Love the pic :-). IFLA has a great little article on this too.
http://www.ifla.org/VII/s10/pubs/s10-newsletter-June07.pdf

Anonymous said...

Have you read "Down Cut Shin Creek:the pack horse librarians of Kentucky" by Kathi Appelt & Jeanne Cannella Schmitzer? This children's non-fiction book is a sweet little gem of a story and it's filled with photographs and an occasional recipe or two.