The Montclair Public Library Bookbike is here! It made its debut at the Montclair Jazz Festival last Saturday and is currently at MPL in the lobby. Local artist Dan Fenelon painted the great artwork on the bike. His work also can be seen on the library’s stairwell walls leading to the 3rd floor Children’s Department.
The Book Bike will transport materials and services throughout  town and provide free Wi-Fi wherever it travels! Be sure to look out for it at our parks, festivals, farmers markets, and more.
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“Bookbike” is a really cute idea but I have to ask: is it useful to pay someone to pedal around town with a selection of maybe a hundred titles and wifi access? What are the odds that the bookbiker will encounter someone who happens to want one of those 100 titles or wants to check their email but doesn’t have an iphone? I know this sounds scroogy but is this really a good use of library budget or taxpayer funds? “Bookbike” is a poor man’s version of “bookmobile” and those died out for a reason.
“I know this sounds scroogy but is this really a good use of library budget or taxpayer funds?”
—it doesn’t “sound scroogy”, it IS “scroogy”.
at minimum, it is to the best advantage of the PL to be involved in community outreach. i can’t imagine a more low-cost way to achieve this goal.
so stop making it like this is some egregious use of “taxpayer funds” and that you are some kind of fiscal watchdog for pointing this out.
Ah, the troll is back. You’re a big fan of “outreach” and “awareness” in all forms, aren’t you? I bet you really love festivals too.
By the way, I think you mean egregious “misuse,” and that is exactly what I think it is; paying salary and benefits for someone to peddle a hundred or so books around town is absurd. Why not use the money to tutor kids in reading AT the library? Of use it to expand the collection? Allow me to introduce you to the concept of opportunity cost; was there a more productive use of the funds now being spent on the bookbike? I just suggested two. And why the irony quotes around taxpayer funds? Who do you think funds the library and the bookbike?
Fiscal watchdog is exactly what I am. This town–with $190,000,000 in debt and a lot of very expensive progressive ideals–needs more or me and fewer of you with your trolly, syntactically and diction challenged outbursts.
The MPL BookBike is not only awesome, it is one of the best uses of money spent I can think of! The BookBike helps to expand the services of the library by bringing event-specific books and free wifi to community events, senior centers, schools – wherever readers congregate. Not only does it bring the library to you, it’s a great model of non-car transportation. So many of us believe we have to get in our cars for short trips around town. Just seeing this mobile library might encourage us to both use our public libraries more often and maybe get there on foot or by bike. The MPL BookBike was fully crowd funded through indiegogo – here’s the link, if I’m allowed to post it – because there’s a super video you should definitely watch. https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/mpl-bookbike#/story
“Fiscal watchdog is exactly what I am.”
—let’s accept this absurd premise for the sake of argument.
what then is the cost of this program? what’s that? you don’t know? what a shock…
now you’ve been told it was self-funded. does this change your point of view? why let the facts get in the way now?
“more of me”—what’s that? more anonymous trolls? more know-nothing, self righteous yappers? fabulous…
Quaint.
Wouldn’t a skateboarder with an iPhone 6 and a backpack of 1st generation iPads do the same thing…and better?
The average resident of Montclair pays a mere $84 per year for access to the MPL. Would much rather my family of four have a $330 annual spending spree at Amazon. Glad to see this book bike was done without raising the library budget more than the 3.2 million it currently is.
Of course, the $840 per year my tenants pay just to service the perpetual local debt is probably a more sensible issue to attack.
“Wouldn’t a skateboarder with an iPhone 6 and a backpack of 1st generation iPads do the same thing…and better?”
—no.
“Of course, the $840 per year my tenants pay just to service the perpetual local debt is probably a more sensible issue to attack.”
—said, of course, after doing exactly the opposite. It’s always fun to observe the lack of self awareness anonymity brings..
Is the rider of the $5,000 bicycle paid?
If the bookbike, including labor, is crowd funded, the I’m all for it, assuming MPL could not use the crowd funding for something that actually might matter, like a reading tutoring program. Riding around with maybe a hundred books is not exactly “bringing the library” to the public.