A mobile addition for book lovers in Rijeka.
At the location where in 1969 the first bookmobile in the former Yugoslavia started its journey, on the square in front of the Rijeka City Library, the new bookmobile was presented yesterday. The whole project was worth about 600,000 kuna and, according to Gorana Tuškan Mihočić, the director of the Rijeka City Library, the new bookmobile will start roaming the streets of Rijeka as early as next week, reports Novilist on December 19, 2015.
“It has been 46 years since the first bookmobile was introduced in Rijeka. The new, colourful bookmobile, which was painted by Ivo Matošić, is its sixth version. It will continue the tradition and visit those parts of the city and Primorje-Gorski Kotar County where there are no library branches. The new bookmobile will contain about two thousand books, which will be selected among as many as 20,000 books. Our target audience are children, the unemployed, pensioners, and the handicapped”, the director said.
The director pointed out that the purchase of the new bookmobile was a result of hard work of employees and volunteers, and donations and grants by citizens who responded to last year’s “Let’s Push the Bookmobile” campaign. In addition to fiction and non-fiction books meant for adults, the bookmobile will include children’s books as well, since children are the most faithful users of bookmobiles.
Emphasizing the tradition of bookmobile service in Rijeka, Mayor Vojko Obersnel reminded everyone that the bookmobile will serve not only Rijeka, but the whole Primorje-Gorski Kotar County. “Not everyone can come to a library in the city, and not all neighbourhoods have their own libraries. It is simply impossible to build a library in each and every part of the city”, Obersnel said.
The main sponsor of the new bookmobile is INA. The price of the vehicle itself was 312,000 kuna, while the upgrades cost additional 276,000 kuna. The new bookmobile is actually a converted Iveco Daily van, which is the largest van available on the market, with the cargo space which is 5 metres long. Even though it is a much smaller vehicle than the current bookmobile, books will actually be more accessible to citizens, since the new bookmobile will be able to visit far more locations than the current 17 locations which the old library on wheels regularly toured.
