LECTURAS DE CAMINO || Christa Zaat

Unknown photographer
Dwelling on Rock Forge Mill, 1905-10
photogravure
8 x 11 cm. 
Washington County Free Library

Joshua Taylor, the janitor at the Washington County Free Library, became the driver of the book wagon between 1905 and 1910.

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Mary Lemist Titcomb (1857–1932) was an originator in Library and Information Science. In 1905 she founded the first bookmobile or mobile library in the United States, in Maryland.
The photographs are from an album and a collection that the library owns, and a photograph album belonging to Miss Chrissinger, the librarian who was in charge of the book wagon and later bookmobiles.

It was reported that the horses names were Dandy and Black Beauty, and that they were stabled at Corderman's Livery Stable in Hagerstown. The wagon was driven by Joshua Thomas.

In August 1910 the original book wagon was destroyed. While crossing the Norfolk and Western Railroad track at St. James a freight train ran into it leaving literally nothing but fragments. In 1912 a motorized book wagon was introduced, the first of a long fleet of vehicles, taking books to the men, women and children of Washington County.

Bookmobiles are now found as part of many library systems around the world, utilizing vans and buses, but also boats, camels and even donkeys.
From the first "perambulating library" in Warrington, England in 1858 to the first 20th century book wagon in the United States in 1905, to the more modern book and media delivery systems, libraries are still taking their wares to an appreciative public.
Christa Zaat