Bookmobile meets people where they are

A team of three — Bilingual Outreach Librarian Yelitza Vargas-Boots, Children’s Services Librarian Annelisa Gebhard and Children’s Services Assistant Oralia Diaz — take turns driving. They also make a stop at a mobile home park, which is for residents of that area only.

“The idea is that we are starting in Odell, but we want to expand to other neighborhoods and places in the county,” said Library Director Rachael Fox. “We want to work with community partners, figure out where the needs are and what model works best for each community.

“It’ll take time to develop, and I know folks are eager to see the bookmobile, or it hasn’t come to their neighborhoods, but we are definitely still working on it,” Fox said.

“We’re still very much in the planning stages,” added Vargas-Boots. “We’re still getting things onto the bookmobile.”

The district has been looking to open an Odell location for several years, Fox said. They partnered with Wy’East Community Church to bring a pop-up library to the downtown area, but it was lightly attended. Next, they partnered with Gorge Grown, which hosts Mercado del Valle in Odell twice a month during the summer. That was successful, but still not ideal, given that the library could only provide outreach for a short window of time.

“That’s when we started to educate the community about the library,” said Vargas-Boots. “I did a lot of one-on-one: This is what the library is, this is what it does. Especially since most libraries now aren’t just what you’d typically think — you come in and get a book. There’s so many other things we offer.”

What they learned from this outreach was, while people were interested in the library and its services, there were obstacles to getting there. Some families don’t have transportation; for others, the cost of gas is too high. Odell itself is made up of farmland and is separated by Highway 35.

“There are so many financial barriers to coming directly to the library,” Vargas-Boots said. And not everyone feels comfortable coming to the Hood River location, “because it’s right in front of other big, official buildings,” she added. “Just the idea of downtown Hood River is still scary — I think for a lot of folks, especially a lot of Hispanic and immigrant households, it is just intimidating.”

To eliminate the transportation issue, the library district began busing patrons from Odell to the Hood River site on Saturdays, in partnership with Mt. Hood Meadows and, later, Columbia Gorge Express. Though it was successful — and ran for five years — it ultimately became clear it was not the solution.

“We were still just reaching the kids,” said Vargas-Boots. “Not entire families, or other adults, or teens. There was still a large community of folks we still weren’t reaching. And then the pandemic hit.”

Fox said the idea for the bookmobile stemmed from Vargas-Boots’ outreach work. “People want us to bring items where they are; they want us to meet them where they are,” Fox said. “So we thought, ‘Bookmobile!’”

“This is something that we kept hearing for years and years — from the moment I hit the streets of Odell,” Vargas-Boots said. “(We saw) what other libraries were doing; there are a few other libraries that do have bookmobiles. And I think that’s where the idea also sparked from, that we can totally do this.”

Remarkably, it only took about two months — during the pandemic, no less — to raise the $184,000 to needed to purchase and customize the vehicle.

“The Library Foundation, the Friends of the Library and the district all agreed to raise funds to purchase a bookmobile,” said Fox. “At the same time, we also applied for a grant that the State Library was offering for $75,000. But to our surprise, within two months, we raised all the money — the entire community came together, and we raised all the funds before we even received the grant.”

“I just think there’s something really special about that,” said Vargas-Boots. “What community does that, you know what I mean? Especially during the pandemic.”

Thanks to the grant, the library district has been able to purchase books to give away free of charge. “We partnered with the (Hood River County) School District and gave them out quarterly during the pandemic,” she said, adding that more than half of the books the library has purchased to give away have been in Spanish due to demand.

They’ve also been able to purchase the snacks, crafts and personal care items that are also distributed free of charge from the bookmobile.

“Myself, coming from a low-income migrant family household, I wasn’t always able to experience a lot of the book fairs, so I just want to make sure that every child, no matter their income status, that they’re always getting something for free from the library,” said Vargas-Boots. “I think that’s really, really important. And it sets the tone in the child’s mind, and the family’s.”