TTW Mailbox: Taking the Library to the Beach

Jens Bang Petersen / Musikbibliotek.dk / Gentofte Bibliotekerne writes to fill me in on somehting we discussed in the Next Generation Libraries panel at ILI in London – taking the library to users!

Hello Michael We talked briefly at ILI2008, where I told you I was one of the librarians that visited the beach with a mobile ‘library’ this summer. You can see a small video made by the local newspaper/tv-station here: http://pola-dk.qbrick.com/index.aspx?cid=43&mid=631 and an article here:http://www.villabyerne.dk/article/20080802/ARTIKLER/670743420/1048

This is our take on the library on the beach: very informal with books, comics, magazines that we do not need delivered back, and therefore we lend out without a return date. Deliver back when you have read the book. And if they do not deliver back – well we earned some goodwill. But we wanted to keep it simple, no computer equipment and the borrowers did not need to bring a card.

The other library in Denmark who did were more formal, they worked it from a caravan with registration of who borrowed what.

Who knew we could take the library to the beach? Any US libraries doing this?