photo by: Mike Yoder

The Lawrence Public Library has a new book bike, made possible by a gift of the Bob Frederick family. The book bike will be used for books and information delivery at places like the Farmers Market, city parks and other special events around the city.

The Lawrence Public Library is introducing a new way to bring its books and programing to the community.

The library recently unveiled its new book bike, and staff hope it will enable the library to reach more people by visiting locations that are less accessible for the library’s book van.

“Our whole point is that it can go into some of the smaller places that we haven’t been able to utilize much previously,” said Pattie Johnston of the library’s outreach services department.

photo by: Mike Yoder

The Lawrence Public Library has a new book bike, made possible by a gift of the Bob Frederick family. The book bike will be used for books and information delivery at places like the Farmers Market, city parks and other special events around the city.

“The first thing we did with it is one of our children’s story-tellers took the bike down to the Headstart preschool, and gave a short little program,” Johnston said.

The bike is outfitted with a custom-made box — painted red with a white dot to match the library’s logo — that opens up into shelving. Johnston said they envision using the book bike not only for books but also for information on library programs and services, such as its ebook checkout or tech help.

“The box opens up and we can have a display, we can have books, any kind of programming that we want to do out of that box,” Johnston said. “Eventually our hope is to have it maybe down at the park or downtown, on the street itself, and have people be able to check things out from there and get information about the services that we have.”

The bike, which has the nickname of Freddy, was made possible by a gift of the Bob Frederick family. The bike has already made a few appearances at the Farmers Market, and Johnston said they hope to take it to more community events in the future.

“It is limited as far as what we can carry in it, but hopefully it can take us some places that we haven’t been able to go,” she said.

A regular schedule and staffing for the bike is not yet set, but its next appearances will be at the Tuesday and Saturday farmers markets in downtown Lawrence.