Okay, so there are few things that can match the pleasure of walking into a building filled with books. But these bookmobiles, book boats, and beasts of book burden have brought the joys of reading to people who couldn't easily access brick and mortar libraries.
Top image: The Book Caravan, one of the first traveling bookshops, 1920, via Book Caravan.
A horse-drawn cart in Washington in the 1900s. It was one of the first American bookmobiles, built in 1905, but was hit and destroyed by a train in 1910.
(via Crossett Library and Wikimedia Commons)
A bookmobile in Indonesia, early 20th century
(via Wikimedia Commons 1 – 2)
Books free for everybody, right at the door – if you vote "yes"
(via Photo-Journal)
Multnomah County Library, 1926
(via Multnomah County Library)
The first bookmobile of the Public Library of Cincinnati, c. 1927
(via Public Library of Cincinnati)
Book Caravan in Iowa, c. 1927
(via Libropatas)
Rockville Fair, Maryland, 1928
Greensboro, North Carolina, 1936
(via Crossett Library)
An opened bookmobile
(via Boing Boing)
A circulating library in a streetcar in Munich, Germany
(via Crossett Library)
A tram in Berlin with 2400 books in Berlin, 1952
(via Wikimedia Commons/Bundesarchiv)
Framingham Public Library, 1956
(via Framingham Public Library)
A traveling library used in Johannesburg, South Africa, between 1955 and 1965.
(via Wikimedia Commons)
A Boston Public Library bookmobile, 1963
(via Boston Public Library)
A Czech book truck
(via Wikimedia Commons)
A mobile library in Canterbury
(via Christchurch City Libraries)
The bookmobile of Providence Public Library, 1967
(via Providence Public Library)
A mobile library in Kurdistan, Iran, in 1970
(via Wikimedia Commons)
The Bicentennial Bookmobile in Utah, 1976
(via Utah State Library)
At the waterfront in Gosford
(via Gostalgia)
Oshkosh Public Library city and county bookmobiles, 1981
(via Paul's Newsline)
A Utah State Library bookmobile in the mid-1980s
(via Utah State Library)
Providence Public Library, 1991
(via Providence Public Library)
A book bus of the Dunedin Public Libraries in New Zealand
(via Wikimedia Commons)
A rolling library in Granzin, Germany
(via egonwegh)
The latest version of the San Jose Public Library's bookmobiles, 1999
(via San José Library)
"Driven to Read," Utah
(via Utah State Library)
A religious mobile library in Jerusalem, Israel
(via Wikimedia Commons)
The mobile library of Summit County
(via Summit County Bookmobile)
A truck in Indonesia
(via Wikimedia Commons 1 – 2)
Berlin, 2011
(via Wikimedia Commons)
A Danish Library Bus, designed by Peter Callesen
(via Peter Callesen)
A Camel Library Service in Kenya
(via Afroautos)
A donkey library in Colombia
(via The Polisblog)
Bibliomulas in Venezuela
(via Stacey Edwards)
A floating library named Epos, visiting small Norwegian towns since 1963
(via Wikimedia Commons)
Left to decay in southwest Washington state
(via J Brew and Washington State Library)
An abandoned Bookmobile with a Gerstenslager body
(via Ken Duffy)