Promoting reading 1
came to be replaced by book buses, which even tod
ay are a common form of mobile library. Book buses are one of Sweden’s public library outreach activities and have existed for close to seventy years – the first book bus started operation in Borås in 1948. The inspiration for book buses in Sweden came from the USA and the UK, where book buses began to be used in the 1920s, from having previously offered mobile libraries by horse and cart. In Sweden in 1975 a state subsidy for book buses was introduced which resulted in an increase in book buses. Book buses, understood as a kind of mobile library branch in specially fitted out vehicles, operate today in roughly one third of Sweden’s 290 municipalities. The fundamental idea behind a book bus is to make a library service available to all, regardless of their place of residence. Incidentally, there is nothing about book buses in Sweden’s Library Act. However, the Act does state that public libraries are to be available to all, and adapted to the needs of users. Book buses and other mobile libraries are a means of effecting such availability. With the aid of book buses, libraries can get to readers instead of the other way around. A history of book buses in Sweden is provided in a Masters thesis in Library and Information Science (Lysebäck & Norrström 2000). It shows that during the 1970s and 1980s, book buses were more or less taken for granted while the 1990s saw a decline in them. The decline in the number of book buses in the 1990s was in part a result of cutbacks in library funding generally, which had an impact on the library’s outreach activities. The need for mobile libraries has varied over time and can be seen in relation to the increase in private car ownership and the expansion of communications networks, as well as increased access to the Internet. Book buses often have their own names. In Falkenberg for example, it is called the Owl, and is a bus with approximately 4000 media items including books, CDs with music and stories for children, periodicals and audiobooks for children and adults. There is also a mobile library for small children called the Bumblebee, which carries some 1000 media items, primarily picture books, easy fact books and CDs for children, but also books on teaching children and child development. The municipality of Falkenberg has operated its mobile libraries since 1976. In August 2014, the mobile libraries in Falkenberg and the Swedish Libraries Association held a Nordic conference entitled Mobila möten (Mobile encounters), which brought together 200 people and 20 mobile library vehicles from the four countries over two days. The idea behind the mobile library is an old one, of offering a library service to sparsely populated rural areas. For this purpose, besides buses and other wheeled vehicles, Sweden also deploys book boats in several areas. For example, there has been a book boat operating in the Stockholm archipelago since 1953. The book boats tour for one week every autumn and spring and carry around 3000 books. This activity is operated by the regional library in Stockholm and financed by the Stockholm County Council. Book boats are sometimes given literary sounding names. In Norway, for instance, a number of smaller coastal cities are visited by the book boat Epos (Epic). The Bubble Caravans can also be used as mobile libraries. In the counties of Södermanland, Västmanland and Örebro, a project entitled Bubblan – berättelse på väg (The Bubble – stories on the way) ran between 2010–2012. “Bubble” is the affectionate name in Sweden for the 93