General Discussion
Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsThe Women Who Rode Miles on Horseback to Deliver Library Books
Source: Atlas Obscura
The Pack Horse Library initiative was part of President Franklin Roosevelts Works Progress Administration (WPA), created to help lift America out of the Great Depression, during which, by 1933, unemployment had risen to 40 percent in Appalachia. Roving horseback libraries werent entirely new to Kentucky, but this initiative was an opportunity to boost both employment and literacy at the same time.
The WPA paid the salaries of the book carriersalmost all the employees were women, making the initiative unusual among WPA programsbut very little else. Counties had to have their own base libraries from which the mounted librarians would travel. Local schools helped cover those costs, and the reading materialsbooks, magazines, and newspaperswere all donated. In December 1940, a notice in the Mountain Eagle newspaper noted that the Letcher County library needs donations of books and magazines regardless of how old or worn they may be.
Old magazines and newspapers were cut and pasted into scrapbooks with particular themesrecipes, for example, or crafts. One such scrapbook, which still is held today at the FDR Presidential Library & Museum in Hyde Park, New York, contains recipes pasted into a notebook with the following introduction: Cook books are popular. Anything to do with canning or preserving is welcomed. Books were repaired in the libraries and, as historian Donald C. Boyd notes, old Christmas cards were circulated to use as bookmarks and prevent damage from dog-eared pages.
Read/view more: http://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/librarians-horseback-new-deal-book-delivery-wpa?utm_source=twitter&utm_medium=atlas-page
What a fascinating look into women's history!
blaze
(6,362 posts)Thanks so much!
Freedomofspeech
(4,226 posts)This warms my heart. Thank you for sharing this.
demmiblue
(36,865 posts)I also smile when I see the display they create ever year during the Banned Books Week.
Freedomofspeech
(4,226 posts)In a rural school district. Every year I would make a huge banned book display and call the local newspaper to cover it. I had the best job ever...poor kids but they loved our library. Many of them still keep in touch with me.
Pacifist Patriot
(24,653 posts)logosoco
(3,208 posts)procon
(15,805 posts)Managed by the LA County Library, the Bookmobile operates on a three-week schedule. They have a bookdrop at the little mom and pop market, and you can order almost anything and they will get it, books, newspapers, music, video games, movies. I like to browse through cookbooks, DIY how-to books, and photo displays on different cultures or landscapes.
xxqqqzme
(14,887 posts)were a thing of the past. Good to know communities are still served by this great idea.
Wounded Bear
(58,670 posts)We used a bookmobile when I was a kid. We lived out of town and mom didn't drive, so that was about the only way to get reading materials.
beam me up scottie
(57,349 posts)Love this story and the pictures. Thanks for posting it, demmiblue!
sandensea
(21,639 posts)(as well as LBJ - who did a lot for Appalachia)
It's a lot like what you read about in many third-world countries:
The voters (where there is any democracy) seem to know better; but have become so accustomed to being governed by despots they can't imagine any real alternatives - and in fact often feel a deep distrust toward anything other than their familiar despot types.
The West Virginia model of governance, thus, seems to be Don Blankenship.
MLAA
(17,298 posts)kag
(4,079 posts)Libraries, American history, and heroic women! Thanks so much for posting this!
suffragette
(12,232 posts)K&R
treestar
(82,383 posts)Books were not so easy to get as they are for us today.