1912 - first motorized bookmobile (in front of the Washington County Library.)

This was a 1912 IHC Autobuggy.

From the 1912 Annual Report of the Washington County Free Library...

County Extension.

(Book Wagon. Miss Chrissinger.)

Last March the Library purchased an automobile especially equipped and adapted for rural delivery of books. Mr. E. A. Corderman was engaged as chauffeur and Miss Chrissinger put in charge. Despite the fact that summer is the season when the farmer and his family are most occupied, interest has everywhere been evident and good results have been obtained. In the past six months three quarters of the county has been thoroughly covered, ten new routes having been laid out in addition to the fifteen already opened.

Wherever the old wagon had gone, its absence had been keenly felt, and the new one was hailed with expressions of pleasure and satisfaction, while 342 new families availed themselves of the opportunity for use of the books.

At another cabin where a family of six or seven lived in two small rooms, the mother said with tears in her eyes, "You've no idea how much I enjoy having the children read to me!"

The advantage of sending a trained library worker out with the wagon is seen in the fact that she is increasingly depended upon to select the books, and meeting people in their own homes, can study conditions and suit the book to the individual.

The call for books of a practical nature has been constant, and often it has been impossible to supply the demand. Everywhere the people are looking to the library for the best and latest methods of truck gardening, fruit raising, agriculture in all its phases, while the farmer's wife welcomes any new suggestions in dairying, domestic science and poultry culture.