'LEO' the bookmobile visits Players senior center

[St. Johns County Public Library]
'LEO' the bookmobile visits Players senior center
by Chuck Adams, Staff Writer

http://www.beachesleader.com/articles/2008/08/13/ponte_vedra_leader/news/doc48a2205a812e5465178689.txt

“LEO” can be seen pretty much all over St. Johns County.

LEO, or Library Express Outmobile, is the St. Johns County Library System vehicle that visits and takes books to a variety of facilities, including senior citizen centers, shopping complexes, daycare centers, churches and even the Vilano Pier.

LEO, better known as the bookmobile, visits The Players Community Senior Center every two weeks.

Betty Frederick, extension services manager for the county library system and formerly of the Ponte Vedra Beach Branch Library, is the reason the bookmobile exists.

“I wrote the grant [in 2000] when I first came here,” Frederick said Wednesday while standing in the bookmobile at The Players.

“Actually they had submitted a grant before for a bookmobile, but it wasn’t competitive enough. I had to dust if off, clean it up.”

At the time the target market was primarily seniors, still a large part of the mix.

“But now it’s gone beyond,” said Frederick.

“This is primarily because we have this wonderful plan for siting libraries, where they ought to be built based on population.”

That plan, however, has run into roadblocks.

“We probably won’t see another branch built in my lifetime,” said Frederick.

Potential sites, she said, were the new communities of Nocatee and RiverTown, also World Golf Village and a stand-alone for the Hastings area, where the existing library is in an historic building.

“All that was in the plan. But we’ve got to put that plan on hold. We’re forced to because we don’t have the funding.

“The mobile library is the absolute, one of the best services the library system provides,” said Frederick, “because it essentially takes the library to where people live, work, congregate, who sometimes are unable to get to the library because of distance, don’t drive anymore, can’t see well enough.”

The Players Senior Community Senior Center and bookmobile have combined to identify 10-12 seniors living in Ponte Vedra Beach who are homebound.

Library materials are going to be sent to those seniors via Meals on Wheels on Tuesdays. The volunteers who deliver the meals will take library material, then pick it up when the seniors are done.

While the county library system has more than 475,000 volumes, the bookmobile can offer some 3,000 items, said Frederick.

“We have every format that the Ponte Vedra library has, except that we can’t hold as many.

“We go to daycare centers, child development centers,” she said.

“We’re all over the county.”