By Joanne Bailey-Boorsma
In Kent County, about 50 percent of the third grade students are at a grade level reading proficiency, and 50 percent are not. It is odds that the Kent District Library hopes to improve upon with the launch of its new bookmobile.
“There are several studies that have shown that if [students] hadn’t hit reading level proficiency by third grade they have a deficit that actually kind of hobbles their ability to be successful in further schooling efforts especially after they get done with high school,” said KDL Executive Director Lance Werner. “They face a struggle pretty much for the rest of their lives.”
However, by getting reading materials to students before or as they enter third grade, KDL hopes to help make a dent in the area’s third grade reading issues. To help with that, KDL decided to turn to an old program it offered about 30 years ago — a bookmobile.
“A lot of people say, why not just use technology, and the honest God truth is not everybody has access to technology and sometimes taking a low tech solution makes sense,” said Werner during a recent unveiling of the bookmobile at Steelcase. “We want to make sure people have access to physical materials and actual books as well as technology.
“That’s the whole purpose of the bookmobile. It is literally a library on wheels.”
The bookmobile was made possible through a $208,000 grant from the Steelcase Foundation with a Frey Foundation grant covering the bookmobile’s materials and J&H Family Stores covering a full year of fuel.
The bookmobile is 36 feet long, 11 feet tall and 8.5 feet wide. It weighs about 22,000 pounds with the collection inside. That collection includes books, DVDs, audiobooks, magazines, and video games. The bookmobile itself is a hotspot and will also have hotspots available for checkout as well as iPads and computers. Additional, from April to October, the bookmobile will have two bicycles available for checkout.
The white, green and blue vehicle has a TV screen on the outside to allow for movie presentations. There is also a lift on the back of the bookmobile, so it is handicap accessible.
The bookmobile will be visiting a number of locations from area schools to retirement centers. KDL Community Engagement Manager Sara Proano said materials can be tailored to a specific location. So if the stop is at a school, age appropriate items will be available, and if the stop is a retirement center, materials, such as large print books, will be geared more towards that age range.
Werner said the biggest focus is the areas that are underserved because they are rural and/or there are not libraries available.
“There are a lot of areas of Kent County that are underserved and we want to make sure we are able to reach people where they are at,” Werner said, adding that the bookmobile will be visiting schools in the Wyoming and Kentwood areas.
“We aim to be a part of the campus and have stops on their campuses to make sure that kids not only have excellent services from their media centers in the school, but excellent services from the Kent District Library and a lot of times school kids have the biggest transportation issues out of all of us and really for some of those kids the only chance they will get to visit the library will be to visit the bookmobile when it comes to their school.”
The bookmobile will run Mondays through Thursdays plus Saturdays. Fridays are reserved for special events and maintenance. The bookmobile will return to locations so that people have time to return materials, Werner said, adding that materials can be returned to any KDL branch.
For the bookmobile schedule visit kdl.org and go to events, clicking bookmobile under branches or go to kdl.org/bookmobile where people can request a visit from the bookmobile.
