Libraries on the Move
The Hennepin County Library's "Workers Who Read" program. Starting in 1905, the library gave service to telephone operators, firemen, clerks, streetcar employees and many other groups who had difficulty getting to the central or branch libraries. There were 45 stations located in factories and business houses as part of the program. Courtesy of the Hennepin County Library via Minnesota Digital Library.
As public libraries grew in communities across the United States, they focused on creating better and better access for patrons to library resources. This included new, innovative thinking about how access could be made easier for patrons and how libraries could better serve communities that were isolated from them physically.
Libraries, thinking more broadly about how to bring books directly to the people, developed new programs aimed at previously untapped audiences who might find it too difficult to visit library branches. These included on-site libraries for workers and their families in unique places like railroad cars and factories, as well as library services in hospitals and prisons. In programs funded by communities, as well as the Works Progress Administration, libraries were bringing books to the community by foot, boat, horseback, and the increasingly popular bookmobile. In times of national struggle, like the Great Depression and both World War I and World War II, libraries mobilized to fulfill their missions of public service.
