Grant funding for rural library services through the Linn Library League is running out, making this season the last for its Bookmobile and other programs.

Coordinators hope patrons of the mobile library will want to keep the books coming by establishing a Linn County library district.

The league employs two part-time librarians for the Bookmobile, which makes 12 stops a week offering free media lending to residents who may not have easy access to a public library.

Stops include Waterloo, Foster, Sodaville, Lebanon, Crabtree, Brownsville, Shedd, Tangent, Cottonwoods and Millersburg. There are also a few in the Albany area.

On a recent Wednesday the library on wheels visited the Lacomb School in Lebanon.

Librarian Charles Dunham says 10 to 15 people visit at each stop.

“I love coming here,” said regular patron Tina Morgan. Coming from her home about three miles outside of Crabtree, she said the Bookmobile is more convenient and less expensive for her than visiting a city library.

Holding two books and two VHS tapes, Morgan said without the Bookmobile she wouldn’t access the library.

Parents with young children, homeschooled children and retirees make the majority of Bookmobile users, Dunham said.

Many items in the collection have been donated, and highlights include youth DVDs and VHS movies, audiobooks, a few video games and large-print books.

Patron Tim Mattson said he frequents the Bookmobile with his two sons every week or two.

“Being that we are outside the city limits, the Bookmobile has been a real blessing for us,” the Fairview-area resident said. “The Bookmobile was a chance for our kids to be exposed to different books.”

Now that rural areas have experienced library services in their neighborhoods, the league is hoping voters will want these services enough to vote to create a library taxing district — serving all Linn County residents.

“Our purpose was to show people what library service is like so that they would want to have tax-paid library service,” Library League co-coordinator Linda Ziedrich said. “Everybody could go to the libraries and get a library card, it would be good at all the libraries, and the funding would be stable, nobody could take it away from the library because it’s permanent. That’s always been our goal.”

The effort has worked on Mattson, who said he would vote in favor of a library district.

“In the age of multimedia, a good old-fashioned book is a good thing,” he said. “I think it’s critical — especially in our rural community.”

“We got one year of funding to start studying the idea of a library district here,” Ziedrich said. “Then we applied for three more years of funding to do demonstration projects because we realized that so many of the rural people had no experience with libraries.”

Using the city of Scio as its fiscal agent, the Library League was able to secure nearly half a million dollars in grant funding for the project.

A three-year federal grant was awarded under the Library Services and Technology Act and a fourth year was secured to continue to run the Bookmobile and the summer reading program, she said.

“We ended up getting five years of LSTA (grant funding),” Ziedrich said. “Because the money we had applied for was not enough to actually run the Bookmobile we also applied to the Meyer Memorial Trust for supplementary funds.”

According to Ziedrich, the LSTA grant estimated costs for Bookmobile maintenance, books and other library materials, parking and storage, non-book supplies, cell phone and staffing at $13,804.

Additionally, a Meyer Memorial Trust grant was awarded for unanticipated costs including fuel, insurance, additional books and other library materials as well as additional staffing, totaling $25,399.

League co-coordinator May Garland said the Library League Bookmobile will end its programming at the end of April.

“Those of us who have been working in the Linn Library League need time to turn our attention to a campaign now,” Ziedrich said. “Even though we’ve hired people to run the Bookmobile, it’s required a lot of oversight and we need to turn our attention to the campaign.”

Under the league proposal, forming a library district would bring five public libraries into one system that would serve everyone within the district, which would cover all of Albany (including the Benton County side), Harrisburg, Lebanon, Scio and Sweet Home.

While an exact number has yet to be established, the tax rate for the district would be between 60 and 70 cents per $1,000 of assessed valuation, Garland said.

An opinion poll is being conducted in the county to determine the level of support for the district. If the results are positive, the league will attempt to collect the 10,000 signatures necessary to get the measure on the May 2008 ballot.

What’s going to happen to the books?

The league has yet to make a decision on where the Bookmobile collection will go. The books may be stored, and used, in a school library until a library district is formed. An alternative would be to distribute them among the city libraries. Some of the children’s books were obtained through a grant whose donor stipulated that they go to the Scio Public Library if no district is formed.