The Strathcona County Library serves not only the population of over 65,000 people within urban Sherwood Park, but also the almost 30,000 other residents in the greater Strathcona County area through a novel solution to provide adequate access to the widespread rural population: bring the library to them! Starting in 1982, the Strathcona County Bookmobile has been driving around surrounding rural areas engaging communities and promoting literacy; they now service a route of around 400 square miles, operating their basic program four days a week. In addition, they provide free rural wifi hotspots for their patrons at all the locations on their route, sponsored by Shell.

Speaking from experience--I spent part of my childhood living in Antler Lake--I can say how exciting it was when my sisters and I got to run up the stairs of the Bookmobile and explore the shelves. Fifteen years and one new bookmobile later I can happily report that kids, along with all the other patrons, who currently visit the bookmobile every week are just as thrilled to hop on and browse.

The Bookmobile headquarters are attached to the main library; when the new library,opened in 2010, was built, a separate bay was constructed to house the new transit- bus-turned-travelling-library. Nearby is the office, cheerily chaotic, full of a friendly team of Bookmobile support staff and packed full of what portions of the Bookmobile’s collection of books and audiovisual material do not fit on the bus.

Most of the materials that make it onto the Bookmobile are part of a whole separate collection from the central library; programming wise, the Bookmobile is also autonomous from the main library. While they sort their materials similarly: for example, what is called “Bestseller Express” in the main library is called “Bookmobile Browse,” fines are lower and loan lengths are longer to accommodate the infrequency of access by the community. Ultimately, the Bookmobile tries to be as appealing and convenient as possible so that the service is well used. The “Bookmobile Browse” collection was initiated so that rural residents would have equal access to in-demand materials.

The library let me join them for a ride-along one Thursday night. The team of ladies is busy processing holds and packing and wheeling shelves onto the bus for the night’s visits. The Bookmobile services a different route every night of the week, in addition to the day time programming they offer, and so they shift their collection around accordingly to suit the readers to whom they will be providing material. The different communities all have different tastes. Some areas avoid bestsellers and popular fiction in favour of classics, says Diana, while some only want the bestsellers. If time permits, the main Bookmobile collection is turned over monthly. The librarians work hard to keep their collection current to reflect the newest releases and bestsellers as well as seasonal interests (right now, in June, they have a bin of gardening books aboard the bus). To save time and effort, the shelving in the bookmobile is not fixed; straps and velcro keep the units locked and in place while the bus is underway, but free to be rolled off for the easy exchange of material.

This is a huge improvement on the old, traditional-style bookmobile, I’m told. Because the previous vehicle could only be accessed by a set of stairs, books and materials had to be carried up the hill from the library in all kinds of weather--there was no bunker at the time, either--and organized into a much smaller space. “To call the bookmobile librarians dedicated would be an understatement,” says Dawnelle, a member of the bookmobile staff. Nowadays, it’s a much easier process to load the Bookmobile for a visit. The library designed the bus layout themselves for maximum accessibility and simplicity, utilizing as many of the features of the transit bus as they could. This includes the lighting, advertising spaces, and the ramp; wheelchairs, strollers, and walkers are also now easily accommodated.

With the new bus, they now serve daycares and seniors homes--such as Silver Birch Lodge--during the day for scheduled weekly visits; the Bookmobile is running all the time. For the kids, more shelves of picture books are brought on and when visiting seniors homes, they switch in a large print cart.

Tuesday night is the Bookmobile's busiest night; the librarians will typically process 1500-1700 materials and see up to 200 patrons. Twylla--one of the Thursday night librarians--recalls a Tuesday evening when they brought seven large Tupperware bins of holds along: quite a service for the rural residents, she says. The reason for such hectic Tuesdays is an additional location to the service: Ministik, a small country school of around 70 students whose library collection the Bookmobile augments. During the last hour of school on Tuesdays, classes come on and parents drop by. The Bookmobile also serves another school during the week; Fultonvale school’s library is currently under renovation and the Bookmobile provides them with a library collection in the meantime.

Thursday is no Tuesday, but Twylla says they still process around 600 materials on average, meaning my guess of a mere 200 materials is way off (It ends up being a bit of a quiet night; we process just about 400 materials). There are plenty of holds tonight, so they expect to see many of their regulars. Before hitting the road, Twylla and Cindy pick through the holds to put some aside for the first stop. A bookmobile librarian gets to know the individual rural community members well, and so they often know who will show up at which stop and can plan accordingly.

The first stop on Tuesday is Collingwood Cove, along a rural road next to a large unit of mailboxes.

We arrive slightly after the scheduled 3:30 stop and there is a large gathering of people waiting to get on; most are parents with children. The librarians chat familiarly with everyone and introduce them all by name to me. The kids run right to the back, screaming. One of the families tells me that they come to the Bookmobile about four out of every five weeks. One mother, Twylla tells me, after giving birth to one of her children, brought him by the bookmobile to show the staff before even bringing him home from the hospital, an indication of how entwined the service is with the community out here. There is a lot of care taken by the staff to be part of the community, to act as its heart. As well as for easy access, the bus has been set up to facilitate socializing. The librarians opted to lose some shelf space so they could set up some facing transit seats just in case people want to sit down and have a coffee and a chat. "This bus is a meeting hub," says Twylla; "for me, this isn't a job, it's a social network." The bookmobile is an extension of the main library as the “community's living room,” a phrase I often hear while visiting and talking to librarian’s here in Strathcona County.

Walking onto the bookmobile, the first thing you pass is a coffee station and an assortment of magazines overtop of a selection of audiobooks and playaways (self-contained audiobook players). The magazine collection is geared toward rural residents; it includes such titles as Canadian Cowboy Country, Practical Horseman and Popular Mechanics (along with a necessary dose of pop culture: Hello Canada).

This area gets a lot of traffic on the evening I tag along–particularly the magazines–and quite a few magazines are returned by patrons as well. When the bus reaches Collingwood Cove (and later, at other stops), a rotating rack of (extremely current) movies gets rolled up to the very front, near where you would usually pay your fare on a regular transit bus. And boy, does it get crowded. One of the biggest surprises during the evening ride-along was witnessing the volume of DVDs processed for loans. Twylla says that when video stores such as Blockbuster started to shut down, the Bookmobile’s DVD budget doubled to meet demand. They buy eight copies of new releases to be divided among the four nights of Bookmobile service because movie loans are so popular with their patrons. This seems unusual, considering the gradual move away from hard copies of films in favour of streaming options such as Netflix and on-demand services, but I am told that in the rural communities they do not have easy access to high speed internet and it is expensive so physical DVDs are in demand. By the end of the night, DVDs seem like the clear winner for most browsed and borrowed material, although children’s material gives them a run for their money.

Further inside the Bookmobile, the return slots for books and DVDs are positioned on the right, just before the checkout counter. A bulletin board advertises community events and boasts a few love notes to the Bookmobile from its littlest patrons. The first rows of books on the right are Bookmobile Browse books, followed by Large Print and Teen fiction on the main level. On the shelves underneath the Browse bestsellers are television series on DVD.

Along the left, the first unit of books contains holds; an entire full shelf accompanied by an extra bin means this is a popular service of the Bookmobile’s, unsurprisingly. A shelf of nonfiction is next to the holds, comprised almost entirely of cookbooks with a few health books and a small selection of assorted nonfiction on top. The rest of these main level shelves hold genre fiction paperbacks: mysteries, thrillers, fantasy, westerns, and romance. Unless you count the few that make it to bestseller status, literary fiction is fairly absent from the bus.

Two spinning racks stand at the back holding graphic novels and music CDs. These are unusual for a bookmobile to have, remarks Diana, but are useful because they provide room for extra face out material which is inviting to patrons, especially teen readers. The spinner rows on the CD rack spin independently, so multiple patrons can browse the CDs at the same time.

The space at the back of the bus is the children’s section; you can tell how much the kids look forward to their weekly trip by how fast they run to get there. Easy pull out bins are in place so children can sit down and browse the materials. There is an iPad that the children can request to play on--these seem to have replaced the on-bus laptops the Bookmobile used to have--and the bus is equipped with wifi. One of the librarians is usually in the kid section assisting or reshelving; at one point she also helps recommend material to suit one of the regular patron’s reading level. Like the main library, the Bookmobile has bags of pre-selected children’s material, here called “pyjama express” bags, for parents who want to quickly pick some books out for their kids.

The Bookmobile also has its own separate Summer reading game from the main library. This year the theme is science oriented; it’s called “Professor Chaos’ Mad Science Lab.” The goal is to build a monster by reading books labelled different colours. Each colour category of book corresponds to a foam body part of the monster; when one of each type of book is read, the child will have built a whole monster and can win a prize. The summer Bookmobile staff members also perform science demonstrations for kids at their stops during the week to accompany the game. It is definitely a good way to get kids to read non-fiction. Not that they need a push; during the night I see one child on a mission for books on bugs and another interested in reading more about dinosaurs. Quite a few small nonfiction books about animals are checked out by children.

Other past reading games include one for teens called “Movies Rock, Books Rule.” Participants take home a bag with a YA novel and its movie version and get to vote on which one they liked better at the end. Diana says it has initiated some interesting conversation. Another game, called the “Six Degrees of Reading Challenge” involves reading books with different coloured labels--corresponding to genres--in order to win prizes.The name of the game is getting teens reading and excited about it.

Many of the children come aboard the Bookmobile with special coloured backpacks; they are part of the Bookmobile’s “Book Buzz” program for grade one students from rural schools. It is a free “no-barrier” loan program, which aims at keeping kids reading over the summer. In the spring, the Bookmobile visits schools and offers programming; the bus can be set up with foam benches for the kids to sit on while participating. The librarians tell five stories, allowing each modality of learning to be utilized. For example, they tell a story accompanied by flannelgraph pictures for visual learners, or they have a tell and draw for kinesthetic learners. The kids are allowed to pick their own coloured backpack and eventually work towards prizes by reading books for tokens. It gets them excited to come browse and read. They are allowed to take out five books a week with their own library card. One frequent user of the Bookmobile tells me that she credits her son’s success in school to the Bookmobile; her son was encouraged to read more through the experience of visiting the bus full of books.

After Collingwood Cove, the Bookmobile drives to the Country Mercantile Store at Uncas. It’s a bit slower here than the first stop, but lots of patrons who the ladies know stop by to chat and browse.

One patron to whom I am introduced says he frequents six of the twelve weekly stops the Bookmobile makes; he has the schedule memorized and drives to whichever location is closest depending on the time or where he is. Sometimes he comes multiple times a week. Much of the time he is chasing down a hold or a book that is not available from the main library because it is part of the Bookmobile collection. He has been using the service for 30 years. Today he is bringing back a bunch of movies and coming to browse, but he says he mostly puts materials on hold and comes to collect them.

Twylla also introduces me to a man who has only become a regular reader recently, in his adult life. His daughter is an avid reader and accompanying her to the Bookmobile led him to start picking up books to read during downtime at his job. He comes for actions and thrillers, like Jack Reacher. In large print and he likes Robin Cook books.

Another patron to whom the librarians introduce me comes in every week and takes out a new cookbook. This week he is grabbing one on gluten-free cooking. He tells me that coming to the Bookmobile helps him find new things to read; all the patrons are interested in each other and interested in reading. Last week, he says, someone saw him reading the back of a David Baldacci novel and suggested he try reading some books by Lee Child. The bus used to have a section called “Good Reads,” recommended by patrons, but not anymore. Today he is also looking for nature shows among the DVD selection of television shows and is disappointed not to find any. Twylla makes a note to herself to bring some on the bus next week. This is something I see regularly over the entire night. The reason the Bookmobile is so well loved stems from the librarians’ efforts to know their patrons and their reading habits. In addition to thinking of recommendations for their patrons, every time someone mentions something they are looking for or interested in, one of the librarians notes it for later. The close interaction between the librarians and the community has created a very personalized service. Even the exterior of the bus exemplifies this; it is decorated in photographs of community members who volunteered to be pictured accessing the Bookmobile’s services.

The database system on the bus isn’t live; all the holds and checkouts processed don’t get updated until they are back at the library, so writing notes is also how they manage their administrative duties and holds. If the library does not have the material, the librarians will request a purchase. As a rule, Twylla says, most patron requests get purchased; it’s a good way to keep their collection current. There is a lot of demand for picture books and hardcovers.

The last stop on Thursdays is Antler Lake Community Hall.



In addition to providing Bookmobile services, the Bookmobile staff host a community event here every Thursday with food and entertainment. There is a lego table for kids to play at and tonight a group of elderly community members--it is Seniors night--are singing along with two young performers. Back on the bus, ladies congregate in small groups and chat. While we wait for browsing patrons to decide on materials to borrow, someone comes in asking if there are any people in the area interested in starting a book club; she wants to put up a poster.

The Bookmobile represents reading at its most social; it is a community endeavour to improve literacy and share a passion for the written word. By the end of the night we have seen 112 patrons, bringing the number of people who accessed the Bookmobile this week to almost 500.

Last Updated: Dec 28, 2016