Alice MacGougan is used to hauling heavy boxes of books around Salem.
As a senior librarian for the Salem Public Library, MacGougan makes monthly trips to 10 retirement communities around the city, helping seniors who often lack transportation get books from the library.
“We have quite a large community for only having two library buildings which are quite close together,” she said.
Her trips just got easier with the rollout of a new library outreach van, which will allow her to travel to multiple facilities without running back to the library to get more books.
Rolling carts secured inside the van can be filled with books, and a hydraulic lift in the back makes it easier for librarians to load books in and out without lifting them.
“We’ll have to get a lot of bungee cords,” said librarian Hannah Bostrom.
The van is ready to roll after arriving at the library in late June. Librarians hope it will make it easier for them to get books in the hands of people who can’t or don’t come into the library.
“This can be a forbidding building, and being out in the community and explaining what we have … is a great way to help them find the library,” said Sonja Somerville, senior librarian who wrote the grant.
Many people’s perception of the library’s main branch is that it’s unwelcoming, said Bostrom, who oversaw the design for the van’s colorful wraparound artwork.
Parking in the adjacent garage has been free since 2021, but cost money before the pandemic, making access a challenge for people struggling to pay bills or who simply didn’t have loose change available.
The library also recently stopped charging late fees for overdue books after an internal study found librarians were spending more money in postage and staff time collecting fines than the fines yielded.
“We’re still always finding new people” who don’t know about those changes, Bostrom said.
The van isn’t a bookmobile, and it won’t have a regular schedule where librarians visit set points in Salem to check books in and out because the library doesn’t have enough staff for a new fixed service.
Instead, librarians will take the van to community events and other pop-up distributions, filling rolling book carts inside with items for checkout and signing people up for library cards using the van’s Wi-Fi.
Somerville said the van may also be used for outreach activities, like taking a craft project to a children’s event.
The library has a bookmobile from 1992 which does some activities for children, but it’s a retrofitted school bus which requires a commercial driver’s license to operate. The new van can be driven by anyone.
The vehicle was purchased and retrofitted with a grant from the State Library of Oregon, paid for by federal Covid relief funding.
Salem’s library secured the grant in 2021, but it took some last minute intervention to make the purchase happen after an initial purchase effort fell through.
The unsung hero in the library’s van saga was the city’s fleet service department, Somerville said.
When supply chain issues initially left librarians unable to locate a suitable vehicle, they feared they’d lose out on the grant, which required them to have the van in hand by the end of December 2022.
But city workers found a used van that met their specifications and refurbished it to suit the library’s needs for $100,000, finishing the project about two weeks before the grant deadline.
The state grant also paid for a design for the wrapping on the van—a bright blue canvas featuring scenes of life in Salem and Oregon, including a beaver, the Golden Man from the state Capitol and the Taco Bridge in Riverfront Park. The Salem Public Library Foundation covered the wrapping, about $5,000.
Library staff are using pieces of the design in other places like t-shirts and on social media to increase library visibility and make it easier to associate the van with the library.
The van will make a debut appearance Wednesday, July 26, at a summer reading event at Riverfront Park, where bilingual performer Angel Ocasio will juggle and perform magic from 11 a.m. to noon.People interested in having the van at an event can fill out an outreach form request on the city website.
Contact reporter Rachel Alexander: [email protected] or 503-575-1241.
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Rachel Alexander is Salem Reporter’s managing editor. She joined Salem Reporter when it was founded in 2018 and covers city news, education, nonprofits and a little bit of everything else. She’s been a journalist in Oregon and Washington for a decade. Outside of work, she’s a skater and board member with Salem’s Cherry City Roller Derby and can often be found with her nose buried in a book.
