The family at the bookmobile

One of the several things to which Hagerstown may well point with pride is the excellent county library which is located there. This excellence consists not so much in the building, equipment or personnel, although these are all that could be desired, as in the fine system of distribution maintained.

You may be driving along the highway far from any town and suddenly come upon a group of people around an automobile truck, into the sides of which shelves are fitted, these shelves filled with books. You ask somebody what it is all about.

"Oh, that's the library wagon," carelessly replies your informant, just as off-hand as one would say: "Oh, that's the milkman."

For those in charge of Hagerstown's library do not wait for the rural population to come in to town for books; they take the books to the people.

...(From Oliver Martin, Chesapeake and Potomac Country, 1928)