OCPL cuts Ribbon on New Bookmobile

A ceremonial blue ribbon was cut Friday on the Oconee County Public Library’s (OCPL) new bookmobile. Outside the Walhalla Library, a brief ceremony was held to welcome the new state-of-the-art bookmobile, which has actually been serving county residents for a month. Bookmobile Librarian Brenda Lee is glad to have a new vehicle after eight years. “Its much easier to drive than the old one was, now at first I was intimidated by the panel overhead but now that I have learned it, it is no big deal. But it is a joy to be driving it and I consider it a privileged to be part of the OCPL.” Lee began traveling to remote areas of the county on March 21. “Our patrons are just in awe, they love it. They have more room; we can have eight people on at a time and they are not bumping into one another as apposed to the old one. Our steps don’t jump up and down like our other one did, so that makes it a little more stable for me and it is easier to carry things on and off. We can also, if we have a large amount of books, which we did when we first moved our collections from the old bookmobile to the new bookmobile, we used and the wheelchair ramp and that was a big help.” OCPL Interim Director and Branch Services Librarian Blair Hinson said the new bookmobile is going to be great for the county. “We are real proud of our new bookmobile. We’ve had a bookmobile pretty much since the library system started back in the 1940s, so we are real happy that we were able to get the money from county council and the state to get us this brand new bookmobile. It is really going to give us the opportunity to keep on getting outside the library; getting outside of our brick and mortar branches and being able to take services to the folks that maybe can’t always get to the library. That is an important part of what we do and I want to keep being able to do it and this machine will let us do that.” The new bookmobile is handicap accessible, so everyone in the county can enjoy seeing all that it has to offer.