Bookmobiles – The Curation of Adventure Machines

When you think of exhibits, the first thing that might come to mind is museums, but libraries hold exhibits all the time. Library collections are even themselves a form of exhibition, thoughtfully curated so that the shelves are filled with materials and displays to be accessed and awed at. The library as a showcase for knowledge and resources can especially be seen with what is called the bookmobile – a traveling library historically used to provide library services to people in underserved areas.

To create a space that ignites wonder and excitement for reading and learning is at the core of the library adventure, and to do so on a smaller, mobile scale is not without its challenges. Library workers and community members alike have proudly undertaken the challenge of curating bookmobiles to have that essence reach far and wide.

Diving into the archival collections at Chicago Public Library, you can see all the planning and curation that goes into making a bookmobile possible.

In the Faith Rich Papers Collection, housed in the Special Collections at Harold Washington Library Center, you can read through correspondence between Faith – a community activist – and publishing houses, requesting specific books for a bookmobile for the Chicago Westside’s National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) organization. Throughout this correspondence, you can see how time-consuming the process was and how thoughtful one had to be to curate the materials that would best serve the community.

As bookmobiles progressed over time a sense of creativity blossomed, not just sharing access to information and knowledge, but also making that accessibility an experience or, more specifically, an adventure.

That sentiment is on display in this photo from 1985 of a CPL bookmobile called “The Adventure Machine,” found in the Northside Neighborhood History Collection at Sulzer Regional Library.

The bookmobile’s bright colors and bold lettering echo the idea that learning and reading don’t have to be dull or grim, the library and its resources are and should be a place where people of all ages come to find a new adventure in their learning path. The library, including its outreach resources such as the bookmobile, is an interactive exhibit where people can curate their own learning experience.

Need a place to start your learning adventure at the library? Check out our digital collections or make an appointment to visit the Special Collections at Harold Washington Library Center to view the bookmobile correspondence in the Faith Rich Papers Collection.