Hedberg Public Library Bookmobile

Research shows that children, on average, lose one month of reading skills over the summer. A major contributing cause for this slide is that many children simply don’t have regular access to books during the summer months. As a result, when kids return to school in September, teachers find themselves re-teaching skills and concepts that students had mastered the previous spring. Our team partnered with Hedberg Public Library in order to help them expand their outreach efforts to students in the summer. Our project was to find and repurpose a vehicle into a bookmobile; the library would then sustain the project after our graduation. Research revealed that many cities use repurposed buses as their bookmobile vehicle of choice. However, we were able to get a decommissioned ambulance donated from the City of Janesville Fire Department at no cost. Our team worked to transform it with bookshelves and, with the help of Fetch Graphics and our sponsors, a wrap for the outside of the vehicle. We also coordinated a book drive to collect books for the project. After our presentation today, we will turn the bookmobile over to Hedberg Public Library. The Hedberg Public Library Bookmobile will be seen throughout Janesville in the coming months!