The doctor will see you now — in his van

The United States spends some $2.5 trillion on health care each year. That works out to about 15 percent of gross domestic product, considerably higher than any other developed economy, according to a Kaiser Family Foundation analysis.

A growing number of clinics like the Family Van operate in the United States, according to the Mobile Health Clinics Network, which has been tracking clinic numbers for six years and finds more each time it conducts its informal census.

“There is no doubt about it, it’s growing,” said Darien DeLorenzo, executive director of the San Francisco-based group.

The mobile clinics are largely nonprofit and most provide general medical care, though smaller numbers specialize in dentistry or mammography.

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Parade of Bookmobiles @ Annual 2010

Video highlights from the 2010 Parade of Bookmobiles, featuring interviews with Subcommittee on Bookmobiles Chair Michael Swendrowski and Stephanie Seipp with the Baltimore County Public Library. The Parade of Bookmobiles was a highlight of ALA’s fifth-annual Bookmobile Sunday, held on June 27, 2010 during the 2010 ALA Annual Conference in Washington, D.C. Attendees were able to board bookmobiles from 7 agencies and 2 manufacturers – one coming as far away as Montana.

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BOMB RESPONSE VEHICLE

A 2009 Homeland Security Regional Response Grant financed a Farber Specialty Vehicles bomb response vehicle.

The vehicle’s various surveillance technologies like the Magnafire light tower with camera and night-scan allows for careful observation of crowds by police. On-board bomb detection devices like a mobile x-ray scanner, bomb detection robot, and under-vehicle surveillance system also provides police an upper hand.

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The Bookmobile as Rural Filesharing Network

In the 1908 booklet Books for the People, the Midwestern librarian Henry E. Legler wrote: “Following in the wake of the great public library movement, which in less than two decades has dotted the cities of the United States with buildings that house millions of books for the people, came systems of traveling libraries.”

Legler was speaking of what we call bookmobiles, which began to connect the rural cities of America during the early twentieth century.

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Summer Must-Read for Kids? Any Book

Now new research offers a surprisingly simple, and affordable, solution to the summer reading slide. In a three-year study, researchers at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, found that simply giving low-income children access to books at spring fairs — and allowing them to choose books that most interested them — had a significant effect on the summer reading gap.

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Escaping The Summer Heat In A Bookmobile

When I feel the summer heat steaming from the pavement, my childhood memories of the bookmobile provide a cooling sensation to my spirit. This feeling came back last summer on a visit to Chicago when I happened upon a parade of bookmobiles of various ages. There it was: an old Ford grille with big, round headlights that was a dead ringer for the bookmobile that stopped at my house as a child.

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Books–On the Road

Another round of historic photographs from the State Archives, this time showing Hawaii’s old bookmobiles, which brought the public library to people in rural areas who couldn’t make it to a main branch.

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Workforce Solutions going on the road to reach Treasure Coast residents in need of training

Workforce Solutions is starting a roving digital literacy program that will provide computer access and training to Treasure Coast residents difficult to reach through traditional methods.

Using $250,000 in federal stimulus funds recently distributed by Workforce Florida Inc., the private, nonprofit agency is buying a 28-foot mobile unit that will function as a Mobile Information Technology Academy.

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KCLS unveils bookmobile, mobile computer lab in Renton

If you can’t get to the library, then the library will come to you. That’s the mantra of the new King County Library System (KCLS) bookmobiles, called Library2Go!

The official debut of the bookmobiles happened Friday in the Renton Library parking lot. Also introduced was another vehicle, the Digital Discovery Zone (DDZ), which is a computer lab.

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