For Saul Hernandez, the first two months of operating Charlotte’s first bookmobile since 1965 are providing new pathways to both the future and the past.
As coordinator of the new, sky-blue, 33-foot-long Mobile Library – called “MoLi” and pronounced “Molly” – he is impressed and a little surprised at the way visitors respond to its promise of personal growth and development. And he feels honored to create a link in the chain of mobile service forged by librarians like Allegra Westbrooks, who managed a bookmobile to serve Black residents of Charlotte starting in 1949.
Saul Hernandez, mobile library coordinator. Photo from Charlotte Mecklenburg Library
“There’s a yearning for the nostalgia that the image of a bookmobile brings,” Hernandez said in late March, on the ninth week of MoLi’s operation. “That’s something that people younger than me, and people who are much older, have very much shared with me. I hear the same message from these two demographics – ‘this is so wonderful, what you’re doing for the children.’ It surprised me a bit to see how intent people are to the idea of serving children with MoLi. They have awareness that it represents the promise and potential of development.”
Relearning the Bookmobile Routine
The Charlotte Mecklenburg Library launched MoLi on a cold Saturday morning in January, with the goal of making library services more accessible to both adults and children in underserved communities. That’s still the prime directive, Hernandez said, overriding minor lessons he’s had to relearn after Charlotte’s 57-year gap in bookmobile service.
A mobile library is a truck filled with technology that needs dedicated attention to maintenance, warranties, repairs, and refueling, he said. And finding locations for MoLi has taught him about the lines that separate public and private resources and parking.
Photo from Charlotte Mecklenburg Library
Charlotte’s First Bookmobiles Were Segregated
These are lessons Hernandez now shares with Westbrooks, a celebrated librarian who also managed the Brevard Street Library for Negroes, which operated until 1961. Westbrooks died in 2017, and in 2020, the Beatties Ford Library was renamed in her honor.
In an oral history project archived at UNC Charlotte’s Atkins Library, Westbrooks described some of the politics of managing a bookmobile program.
Allegra Westbrooks, a librarian who managed one of Charlotte’s first bookmobiles. Photo from Charlotte Mecklenburg Library
“The county’s situation improved with the bookmobile service that was provided from 1949 to 1965,” Westbrooks said in the 2007 interview. “During that period, there were two bookmobiles – one bookmobile to serve the white community and one bookmobile to serve the Black citizens of Charlotte Mecklenburg.”
Like Hernandez, Westbrooks described challenges with locations. In the 1950s, parking the bookmobile too close to a public school, it was believed, might make the school system invest too little in its own books. But Westbrooks parked as close to schools as she could because their libraries lacked resources.
“I can only imagine what it was like to be in her position, with an overwhelming demonstration of need throughout Mecklenburg County and a lesser pool of resources to serve the community,” Hernandez said. “I commend and applaud her service.”
Segregation of library services by race was common. A 2014 dissertation by Derek Attig, a 2012 Google Policy Fellow, indicates the story of bookmobiles is “one about conflict over community: who can share what kind of culture, with whom, and where.”
Work by the Pew Research Center showed about 650 American bookmobiles in 2015 – a declining number, but still vital in rural areas. Kentucky had 75 bookmobiles, more than any other state.
Goals for MoLi
The goals for MoLi are the same as those for Charlotte’s original bookmobiles, Hernandez said – to serve people who don’t have a library nearby or who have physical or transportation challenges. A monthly calendar provides the library’s travel schedule.
MoLi has a wheelchair lift for accessibility, a side awning and 65-inch flat-screen television for outdoor programming. It broadcasts a Wi-Fi signal up to a 50-foot radius from the vehicle, contains public-use Chromebooks, and has capacity for 2,400 books, audiobooks, magazines, CDs and DVDs.
Mecklenburg County’s 2020 fiscal budget allocated $480,000 for MoLi and a mobile library coordinator. In 1949, funding from the North Carolina Alcoholic Beverage Control Commission paid for the two Charlotte bookmobiles. They cost $27,500 – the equivalent of about $320,000 in 2022.
Laney Roberts and Caroline Willingham contributed to this story. They are students in the James L. Knight School of Communication at Queens University of Charlotte, which provides the news service in support of local community news.