Bookmobile News

We are thrilled to announce that the Ernest L. and Ruth W. Finley Foundation has once again stepped forward with generous operating support of the Free Bookmobile program! This is the fifth straight year in which the Finley Foundation has made a major pledge to literacy outreach throughout Sonoma County. Their backing will make it possible to once again embark on our journeys to find the children, families, adults and seniors who are most challenged for access to books and welcome them aboard our colorful free library on wheels.

The Finley Foundation has been an invaluable source of funding for community programs throughout the North Bay since 1985, particularly in the areas of child welfare, health and human services, and arts and culture. Their investments in the Free Bookmobile have helped us grow our service 20% annually, both in terms of persons reached and increased quality of books offered. With our new Mobile Librarian ready to hit the road on more routes, we are poised to do the same in 2016 – 2017!

The Free Bookmobile has great respect for the work various local Active 20-30 Clubs do on behalf of at-risk youth. It has been our pleasure to partner with them on occasion, including efforts to bring holiday celebrations to those who have less. The Active 20-30 club of Santa Rosa #50 is particularly enterprising, a group of like-minded young professionals between the ages of 20-39 who volunteer to improve the lives of  underprivileged youth in Santa Rosa. They do this through large scale fundraisers, but more importantly through direct philanthropic endeavors.

Apparently the respect is mutual because they have made a generous donation toward our outreach services for children! We will be putting the funds to good use in the Santa Rosa area, and look forward to partnering with the club directly at their annual Back to School Children’s Shopping Spree in early August. This is a terrific, morale-boosting event at which low-income kids receive a hot breakfast, haircut, free books (from us) and a school-oriented shopping spree at Coddingtown Mall so they are ready for the start of fall classes. Thank you, Active 20-30 #50!

Our good friends at Sonoma Country Day School have come through yet again! Enthusiastic SCDS teacher Ben Bacon has been a wonderful support on several projects, including one a few years ago that saw all the school’s Scholastic Book Fair points donated to the Free Bookmobile for new purchases. This spring Ben’s leadership club students, the Comet Leadership Council, set an ambitious goal to beat the old single-donation record of 8,000 books with a collection drive they called “Bananas for Books”.

The kids worked hard to spread the word throughout their community and even Head of School Brad Weaver got into the spirit by promising to wear a banana suit if the council met their goal! Not only did they succeed, to the tune of 9,023 books, but the quality of these titles is excellent. We are already giving them away and are very excited about the positive impact they’ll have over the coming months to help stem the dreaded summer reading skill slide, especially for those children who have few books in their homes. We are so grateful and salute Sonoma Country Day School for supporting educational opportunities that have significant real-world impact.

Our volunteer crew accomplished a lot this year! With our best ever outcomes, including getting great books of choice to almost 17,000 people throughout Sonoma County, the Free Bookmobile depended on major support behind the scenes. These generous folks hauled and sorted books, helped patrons on-site, cleaned the bookmobile and its facility, got the word out to communities we were visiting, and much more. We decided it was time to celebrate.

Thanks to donation of a lovely event space by Lisa Kurtz of West County Herb Company, we were able to gather on a sunny spring day in Occidental. Program Assistant Stacy Ruppert put together a nice spread, and Sonoma County Public Library Foundation board member Sheila Almquist (not pictured because she took the photo!) also attended to express gratitude to these dedicated individuals. We enjoyed a great afternoon together sharing food, laughs, and tales of why folks give up their time for our cause. The best part was seeing new volunteers who had never met connect so easily over books and reading. If you’d like to find out more about volunteering for the Free Bookmobile, just send us an email through our “Contact Us” page.

Big welcome to Alison Finch, our new part-time driver/mobile librarian! As detailed in the previous news item, our friends at Sonoma Wine Country Weekend were enthusiastic about our proposal to expand our service by adding more routes. Their funding, along with increased book donations from the community and other sources, has allowed us to make that notion a reality. Alison had been a steady volunteer on board the Free Bookmobile since March of 2015, giving us a chance to see just how well she interacted with our patrons and to enjoy her attention to detail. Her librarian background helped seal the deal, and thankfully, she’s quickly learned how to handle the ‘mobile out on the road.

So no longer will it just be our Director’s face behind the desk. Alison will be out and about, serving up high quality books to anyone and everyone, about one day per week. Please give her a warm welcome when you see her…she’s got some great reads for you!

Our old friends at Rotary Club of Rohnert Park-Cotati have renewed funding for Free Bookmobile outreach in their area! We are thrilled to continue this partnership and are always finding new opportunities to serve the grateful residents of the region. Monthly visits to library-less Cotati are just the tip of the iceberg: we also make stops at the Boys & Girls Club, low-income mobile home parks, the Rohnert Park Senior Center, supportive housing for previously homeless families, Gold Ridge Preschool, summer lunch program sites, special seasonal events and more.

We get particularly excited when partnering directly with Club members to distribute new dictionaries to local third graders. These lucky kids also go home with books of choice from our shelves that day. Another inspiring club endeavor is their “Backpack Program”, which provides groceries to underprivileged children in the community on Friday afternoon so that they and their families can have a nutritious meal over the weekend. Thank you for all you do, Rotary Club of Rohnert Park-Cotati!

With book donations on the rise and requests for our outreach services growing, it just made sense to expand the Free Bookmobile’s schedule beyond what our director/driver can perform on his own. Fortunately our friends at the Sonoma Wine Country Weekend charity group agree, and have offered a grant allowing us to put another driver on the road! This is wonderful news for all the children, families, and seniors who will benefit from these additional bookmobile visits throughout 2016, as well as for the future of the program. With an expansion of staff, we take the first steps toward building an important educational institution that will last beyond its founders. Watch this space for more on this exciting development.

Sonoma Wine Country Weekend (SWCW) is the county’s signature, and largest, charity event, bringing together over 200 of Sonoma’s top winemakers and growers, along with a collection of the area’s best chefs. Jointly produced by the Sonoma County Vintners and the Sonoma Valley Vintners & Growers Foundation, all proceeds benefit local nonprofit organizations. Since its inception, SWCW has raised over $20 million for charities that help students, children, farm workers and people in need in our communities. They also have exciting news: a new partnership with Community Foundation Sonoma County. This collaboration leverages the Community Foundation’s non-profit charitable giving expertise with the vision and generosity of the Sonoma County wine industry. As the SWCW event continues to grow, the philanthropic impact will multiply and this collaboration ensures the fundraising has the greatest possible community impact.

“Sonoma Wine Country Weekend is an excellent example of mobilizing generosity to create community change,” said Elizabeth Brown, President & CEO, Community Foundation Sonoma County.  “We look forward to building on the successes of Fund the Future and the Community Grants Program by bringing our community knowledge, local partnerships and philanthropic expertise in support of Sonoma Wine Country Weekend’s mission.”

Those community-minded folks at Exchange Bank have stepped up yet again! This time it’s their Healdsburg branch throwing open their doors to host a year-round book donation box for us. That means that if you live in the area or are just passing through, you can bring your new and gently used books to their location on Vine Street, just south of downtown. We appreciate the enthusiastic help that ReHealdsburg provided in collecting books for the last couple of years. Their hours were limited, however, so our new partnership with the EB should prove more convenient for local donors. Come on by with your books anytime during banking hours, which includes Saturday. Here are the full details:

Healdsburg Exchange Bank

1031 Vine Street, Healdsburg (433-0400)

MON – THUR  9 Am – 5 Pm, FRI until 6 Pm

SAT  10 Am – 2 Pm

From south, take Downtown Healdsburg exit from freeway 101, proceed north and take a left onto Vine Street. From north, take Westside Road exit, turn left onto Westside and left again into shopping center parking lot before light at Healdsburg Avenue. Thank you!

Wow, January brought some challenging weather! We used to think that the magic of the Free Bookmobile mission protected us from inclement weather and assured our events. We seemed to have a very lucky record in missing storms, often by one day. Now we’re realizing that there just wasn’t much rain to dodge in the past several years! Great for giving away books, not so much for the health of the parched California landscape.

Now that the water has returned with a vengeance, we want to revisit our rain-out policy and help our patrons understand how we decide whether to cancel any given event. There is no hard formula, our director/driver makes a judgment call based on the forecast, current weather, and the type, length, and condition of the roads that would need to be traveled that day. The rain itself can create hazardous driving conditions, not to mention reduce patron turnout, but wind concerns us even more. That’s because our 24′ Freightliner vehicle is very tall and, unusually, carries weight high up on the side walls (due to the bookshelves!). So even moderate gusts can push the bookmobile around as they catch one of the broad sides of the vehicle. When combined with poor visibility and a slippery road surface full of potholes and flood puddles, it just isn’t worth the risk.

Our pledge is to do our best to stay on schedule, and if we need to cancel, to attempt to publicize this as quickly as possible. Notices will go up on both our website schedule page and our Facebook page as soon as one of our staff can get to a computer. The website in particular is the best place to get the latest on our plans in stormy weather — keep it bookmarked and be sure to check it again as close to the time of the event as possible. We’ll also make every attempt to reschedule any missed stops, which we cheerfully accomplished this past month!

We have long been committed to public service in the Larkfield area, roughly half-way between the Northwest (Coddingtown) and Windsor library branches. For years we performed this outreach at Larkfield Center, a popular shopping destination, but were often disappointed with low turnouts. Fortunately we got a nice boost a couple of years ago from the efforts of volunteer Virginia Fifield, who works each month to publicize our local appearances, especially to the nearby schools and low-income housing. Thanks, Ginny!

Now we are in partnership with the Santa Rosa Original Certified Farmers Market to appear at the Luther Burbank Center for the Arts. This is a friendly, popular market, and still within easy walking distance from residential areas like Lavell Village. We’re also finding that kids can more easily convince their parents to visit the bookmobile when there’s yummy veggies and other delights available in the same spot! We appreciate the warm welcome we have received thus far and look forward to setting up among the other quality vendors one Saturday each month from 10 Am – 1 Pm (check our website schedule page for details). There is no charge to enter the market and, as always, the books are absolutely free.