"'My goodness, now we can get books all winter!' one patron exclaimed thankfully" ("There Will Be Plenty of Reading. By October 1944, it was serving 10 rural routes and had already become what The Seattle Times called "an institution in rural communities near Seattle" ("There Will Be Plenty of Reading. The first KCLS bookmobile began rolling on July 13, 1944. McDowell recognized this important fact, and organized bookmobile service early in 1944. The concept was simple: Not every rural resident had the means to come to the library - the library had to come to them. The federal Works Progress Administration had also operated bookmobiles throughout Washington during the Depression of the 1930s. The Seattle Public Library had operated bookmobiles since 1931. Books will be loaned out and gathered by the traveling librarian" ("7 New Branch Libraries. When The Seattle Times described the new library system in January 1944, it also detailed one of the organization's key plans: "A 'Bookmobile,' a library on wheels, is being prepared for visits to crossroads, schools and farm communities. From its inception, KCLS considered a bookmobile an essential part of its service. The King County Rural Library District, later known as the King County Library System, was established in January 1943 after voters approved its formation the previous November. By 2017, the KCLS outreach program included Library2Go! book vans Mobile Learning Labs computer centers TechLab - a mobile computer-classroom and five Traveling Library Center trucks, which were, in essence, the modern equivalents of those original KCLS bookmobiles. In the first decade of the twenty-first century, KCLS made a renewed commitment to outreach, purchasing 17 vehicles with funds from a 2004 bond issue. In 1979, KCLS replaced the traditional bookmobiles with Traveling Library Center vans. Bookmobile use gradually diminished over the next three decades, as new libraries were added all across King County. By 1950, the bookmobile service was covering 28 rural routes and accounted for nearly one-third of the library system's total checkouts. A second specially constructed bookmobile was added in 1947. The early bookmobile served 10 routes and its users checked out about 300 books per day. The fledgling library system had only a few small libraries and many rural patrons without easy library access. King County Library System (KCLS) mobile outreach service began with a single bookmobile bringing books to rural patrons in 1944.
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