This week the Library celebrated the launching of our new bookmobile with a ribbon-cutting ceremony at the Branch County Fairgrounds. The weather was perfect for the county fair and our celebration of the history of mobile library services in Branch County.
The United States has a long and proud tradition of public libraries, including mobile libraries that started gaining popularity in the late 1800s and early 1900s. Those early mobile libraries usually traveled on a mule or a horse-drawn wagon. Library services in Branch County stayed put at first: in homes starting in Coldwater in the 1870s, Bronson in the 1880s, Quincy in the 1890s, with each of those libraries erecting within a couple of decades the grand buildings we know today.
The Branch County Library was formed in 1937, and shortly after in 1938 the library acquired its first vehicle. Operated by Ruth Tapper, this bookmobile was basically a truck that was mostly used for hauling books around to what were called “library stations” at the time. These were typically school partners or places like township halls where small collections of about 50 to a couple hundred items were placed. These library stations were refreshed with new books only about once each year, and materials were checked out on an honor system with no due dates. The exact timing is unclear, but at some point the library either replaced the original vehicle or added an additional one. Either way, we have photos from the 1940s of a 1941 Chevrolet panel delivery truck in use by the Library.
The first bookmobile in the county that people could actually walk into was launched in October 1947. Holding 1,500 items, it was almost as big as our new vehicle. Bringing books, magazines, and vinyl records to schools, stores, and community halls, it was the biggest bookmobile in Michigan outside of Wayne County at the time.
Just a few years later in 1953, the Branch County Library sold that bookmobile for a smaller vehicle that was easier to drive and maintain. Angeline Dean and Lois Shaw were among the librarians who made dozens of stops each month, including at 11 schools. One of those two ladies would drive and the other be on the lookout for potholes or, according to the newspaper, would navigate to the harder-to-find areas of the county…like Butler and Stringtown.
The exact dates are unclear, but sometime between 1953 and 1966 the Branch County Library had acquired a large bookmobile again. Unfortunately, after a failed millage campaign in 1966 to unify the Coldwater and County libraries, the Library ended bookmobile services as part of its cost reduction efforts. But county residents who grew up during those last years of the county bookmobile certainly remember it fondly to this day.
In 2018, not long after a successful millage campaign, the Branch District Library (BDL) embarked on a strategic planning process to ensure that the Library was meeting the needs of everyone in its service area. During the community conversations around the county, a number of people talked of their fond memories of the last bookmobile when they were younger and how they felt a new bookmobile could make a positive impact on the county in modern times.
One of the overarching goals in the final 2018 BDL Strategic Plan was to offer our library users wide-ranging and convenient access to library services, while breaking down barriers to access whenever possible. Another goal was to increase the visibility of the Library in the community and go beyond the walls of our branches. The BDL Board decided that a bookmobile would be a part of addressing both goals, along with Library by Mail services, more digital services, and many other improvements we have made as part of that Strategic Plan.
BDL originally planned on fundraising for the purchase of a bookmobile; instead, budget surpluses during the Covid-19 pandemic made it possible for the Library to purchase the vehicle with no additional fundraising needed. In the Fall of 2021 the BDL Board approved the project, and the following January Cheryl Lawrence was promoted to her new role at the Library: Outreach Manager. Cheryl spent the next several months learning all she could about bookmobiles and their operation. In Spring of 2022 we took bids, selected a winner, and in May placed the order for the new vehicle.
In retrospect, it's astounding that we managed to order the vehicle in such a short time, because it’s very much like building a house. There are so many details to select and you really have to know about the implications of every choice before you decide. Cheryl efficiently led the library through this process, and through the subsequent years of tweaks that followed. For example, we planned on a 20-foot Ford drivetrain and ended up with a 27-foot Freightliner, things were moved around on the inside, and so on. We hoped the results would be worth the wait.
But what a wait it was! We ordered our bookmobile in 2022 with our pandemic fund surplus. Many other libraries around the country were ordering bookmobiles around this same time for similar reasons. The Red Cross and other organizations did the same thing for bloodmobiles, mobile classrooms, and mobile science labs, so there was an near instant backlog in production of custom vehicles nationwide. Initially we were told we’d have a delay of maybe a year, but it was almost 3 years from order to delivery.
Our vehicle finally began its life in 2023, just a short drive west at the Morgan Olson factory in Sturgis. In a beautifully poetic coincidence, Cheryl's husband, Jon Lawrence, worked at Morgan Olson and was almost certainly involved in the creation of the vehicle that became the BDL bookmobile. From Sturgis, the vehicle was transported to Greensboro, North Carolina, to the Matthews Specialty Vehicles factory, where it got a brand-new Freightliner diesel drivetrain installed. And then … we waited … and waited. The staff at Matthews Specialty Vehicles were absolutely fantastic to work with, though, and we highly recommend them! While we waited we loved getting status updates and photos from them, which we “oohed” and “ahhed” over like excited new parents.
To be precise, most of the library was waiting for something to happen with the bookmobile. Cheryl, on the other hand, stayed very busy building up the Library by Mail program and laying the groundwork for our future bookmobile routes. Working with organizations like Maple Lawn and township halls in areas far from our BDL branches, she effected agreements to establish pop-up library sites, similar to those first library stations almost a century ago. For more than two years Cheryl would bring small collections of materials to these stops and get people used to the idea that a bookmobile would arrive some day.
During this waiting period, we began to tackle the issue of what it would take to outfit the vehicle with materials and technology once it arrived. We had been able to order the vehicle without fundraising, but on our normal operating budget we were projecting several more years to completely stock and prepare the vehicle. With that in mind, BDL approached local organizations to apply for grants and solicited small donations from the public at large. And the community really came through to make this day possible!
Our bookmobile project would not have been possible without the generous support of
- The Branch County Community Foundation
- The Coldwater Twp. Sunrise Rotary
- Apex Clean Energy / Coldwater Solar
- Friends of the Lucille E. Dearth Union Twp. Branch Library
- Numerous individual small donors
Thank you so very much to all of those organizations and individuals who shared our vision of increasing access to library services through this vehicle!
Just like in the 1930s through the 1960s, there are people in this community who are unable to get to our brick-and-mortar locations but still deserve full access to library services. They are guaranteed it, in fact, under the Michigan Constitution. This mobile library is part of our efforts to lower barriers to access those services and reach as many people as possible. To bring BDL to them. To increase awareness of the Library and what we do.
Nearly everything you can do at one of our branches you can do on the bookmobile. This 27-foot vehicle has over 2,000 items in the collection for a variety of ages. And as hopefully everyone knows by now: all of those BDL materials have no late fees!
We offer free notary service right on the vehicle. Free faxing. Free WiFi through our cellular connection. You can print from your mobile device or use a laptop for a quick computer session. Library staff will help visitors to find reliable answers to their questions without any AI hallucinations. If library users are looking for something we don’t have on the vehicle, we can order it for them from another BDL branch, or from a library across the state, and then deliver it on a future stop.
Because we have not had a mobile library service for nearly 60 years, we are starting small and ramping up slowly. We have about 7-10 stops so far in a given month, but expect that number to increase over time. The bookmobile will also participate in parades and other special events. You can request to have the bookmobile make an appearance at your event or get a stop added to our route.
Thank you once again to this community and to our special donors for their tremendous support of the library and this project!
John Rucker, Director
August 7, 2025
Thanks to Heritage Room Coordinator Brittany Gemmill for research assistance.
