The truck parked outside Stony Point Hardware in rural Holmes County one sunny summer day wasn’t loaded with tools or heavy equipment. It was stacked with books.
“These are easy reader books for new readers,” said Jim Todaro, pointing at rows of colorful covers. “These are sports books for older kids.”
Todaro has been a librarian on the Holmes County District Public Library’s bookmobile for just over a year, driving the volume-toting vehicle to over a hundred different stops on a rotating six-week schedule.
The roaming service is so popular, the library recently secured $200,000 to replace an aging vehicle that was having mechanical issues.
The new truck will join a growing number of bookmobiles that roam Ohio’s backroads. According to 2023 data from the Institute of Museum and Library Services, Ohio now has more bookmobiles than every other state but Kentucky.
Ohio’s bookmobile history
Ohio’s history with bookmobiles goes back to the late 1800s, when the State Library of Ohio created a traveling program. Back then, books were packed into wooden crates and delivered to reading clubs and schools in the state’s rural communities.
Thirty years after it started, the program had a circulation of nearly 70,000 books.
In 1923, Dayton librarian Electra Collins Doren launched one of the earliest motorized bookmobiles to operate in an urban area.
“She wanted to reach neighborhoods and factory workers and those folks that weren't able to get to the main library building,” said Camee Hart, the outreach services manager for the Dayton Metro Library.
These days, she says many of the early bookmobile stops have become full brick-and-mortar library branches. But the city still maintains a fleet of vehicles, and it unveiled a new, wheelchair-accessible bookmobile last year.
Hart says even though many people in the city have ways to get around, the traveling service still has a place in urban life.
“People tend to stick to their home or their neighborhoods, so if we're able to bridge that gap between where they live and the library, that's what we're here for,” she said.
Reaching rural readers
In other parts of Ohio, bookmobiles continue to serve their original purpose: bringing reading material to people who might otherwise struggle to reach the local library.
“So we have a lot of stops close to where the Amish live,” Todaro, the Holmes County librarian, said.
Many of the bookmobile’s Amish patrons say it’s not possible for them to walk or bike a dozen or so miles down winding rural roads to the closest library. So when the bookmobile comes into town, they stuff their bags with lots of literature, from horse magazines to sports books, inspirational stories to wild westerns.
Bookmobile coordinator Trae Schonauer says the service circulates thousands of books every month.
“We have a huge demand,” he said. “If we go down for a day, there are people calling wondering where we are.”
In eastern Ohio’s Belmont County, the local library recently restarted a bookmobile program after more than a decade without one.
Library director Anthony Orsini says the service helps get books to people with limited access to transportation, especially the elderly and kids.
“We have been reaching out to our schools who have been facing their own funding challenges,” he said. “A lot of times the libraries in our local schools either aren't keeping up with their collections or have completely done away with the library.”
Ross County faces a similar challenge. Outreach manager Ruby Smart says the public library closed two of its branches in local schools. Now, she estimates 75% of the bookmobile’s checkouts are kid and teen books.
“We found that really some of the best community places we go are the apartment complexes, maybe it’s a mobile home park or a low-income housing neighborhood,” she said. “Because that is where we have the most people in a small area and that tends to be where we have the most kids.”
Ross County’s bookmobile is helping fill in the gap, and it doesn’t stop with books: The library system also offers internet hotspots, electric power washers, inflatable paddleboards, even ghost hunting kits — enriching people’s lives with more than novels and nonfiction.
