Claudia Palmer encounters Dunedin City Libraries’ mobile library service, the bookbus, and learns about its legacy across the city. After 75 years, this unique service has become much more than just a place to borrow books.
It’s Wednesday, 9.38 am, in Portobello. On one side of the road, retirees take their place at the cafe equipped with cappuccinos. On the other side, gulls stand guard over the corner store behind a palisade of spikes, put there to deter them. Everyone winces as a campervan heaves itself over the roundabout. It’s a busy morning in the village. Out of sight, winding its way along the harbour’s edge, a taniwha quietly approaches. Rays of sunshine bounce off its skin and pīwakawaka dance across its back. The silver eyes catch its own striking reflection in the slick of the water. The village comes into view, the salty air rising off the basalt wall tickles at the nostrils. The patrons smile at the taniwha, and it smiles back. Gliding past the sleeping pub and up past the crooked cemetery, it comes to rest on the brow of the hill by a row of toetoe and tī kouka. A group of school children and their teacher curiously file down the path. They’ve been expecting its arrival. There’s something special about this taniwha—in its belly lie two thousand treasures it has brought specially for them.
This is Te Puhi Pukapuka, a fully electric, wheelchair accessible bus that is part of Dunedin Public Libraries’ mobile library service. It is one of two buses that travel to forty locations around the city connecting the outer suburbs, like those on the Otago Peninsula and southern beaches of Brighton, to the library. Te Puhi Pukapuka was purpose built in 2023, and it’s vibrant exterior by artist Aroha Novak (Tūhoe, Ngāti Kahungunu and Ngāi Te Rangi) depicts the local taniwha Matamata, who ‘is attributed to carving out the Ōtākou harbour and the Taiari river in search of his master Te Rakitauneke’ as told by Te Rūnanga o Ōtākou. Te Puhi Pukapuka is the sixth in a line of bookbuses dating back to 1950. First there was Gertie, then Victoria, then Puff (yes, it was covered in dragons, ignorant ones in fact, that were being defeated by sun rays of knowledge), then PT and PQ, the latter still part of the circuit.
This month, Dunedin City Libraries will celebrate seventy-five years of their mobile library service, the oldest continuing service in New Zealand. Earlier in the year, the library put out a call to their community to share their favourite stories about the bookbus, and they’ve kindly shared some of the responses with us.
With such a long legacy, the bookbus has been a constant and a weekly ritual for many families growing up alongside it. One parent writes, ‘I have been taking my ‘babies’ to the bookbus since they were actually babies, and now the oldest is almost 15. It’s such a privilege to have a library come to us every week. It feels like the community meeting spot. It’s the perfect place to bump into friends and neighbours. Oh, and to get out some books!’ Similarly, as one thirteen-year-old writes ‘the bookbus is one of my most prominent memories of when I was little. I’ve been going to the bookbus for my whole life.’ For one woman her connection to the bookbus has remained through several phases of her life: ‘I can remember the bookbus way back in the 70s when I first arrived in Dunedin. Dunedin was the friendliest, most warming community I had ever encountered, and the bookbus (a strange hand painted affair, as I remember) was an amazing extension of that. It was there again in the 80s when I limped back into Dunedin’s comfy arms as a solo mum. Now, in my old age it is, astonishingly, still here. It’s a friendly service provided by lovely people who dispense far more than suitable books and magazines.’
The stars of the bookbus are most certainly the librarians who get to know each community, its regulars and the books they like. As one patron reminisces, ‘I used to walk with my family out to the bookbus every Tuesday to get our favourite books out and enjoy them together. I had very fond memories of the times we went, and I think the thing that I remembered best about those trips was how friendly the librarian at the desk was.’ With space for just over two thousand books on board each bus catering to people of all ages, a team of eight (one team leader, six part-time librarians and a shelving assistant) keep the buses stocked and catered to the communities they visit. An older resident says, ‘I am very grateful to the library staff who select my books to read each time and it is obvious that records are kept of my favourite authors. It is very exciting from time to time to get a new favourite one! The care and attention from [the librarians] is of the highest standard and I feel blessed and happy after each visit to the bus.’ Whether it’s remembering a patron’s name or a child’s favourite series, the librarians of the bookbus show a true devotion to the communities they serve. Wonderful, knowledgeable, warm, caring and amazing were just some of the words used to describe the librarians of the bookbus.
Wonderful, knowledgeable, warm, caring and amazing were just some of the words used to describe the librarians of the bookbus.
Several prior librarians of the bookbus also wrote in to share their first-hand experiences of manoeuvring the bus. For anyone not familiar with the steep, volcanic terrain of Dunedin or its creatively shaped streets, we can only imagine navigating the city in a bus filled with books, let alone with no synchronised gearbox! One librarian describes, ‘taking the bookbus up to Halfway Bush one Monday evening in the snow. We got there, but the footpaths were too slippery for customers to visit. My heart was in my mouth all the way back down Stuart Street. And I made it.’ Another librarian tells the hilarious, cautionary tale of taking an alternative route, ‘Coming back from our Portobello run one day the driver decided we should try going back via Highcliff Road—this was not okayed by the bosses, but who would know? Apart from books falling off shelves and the door swinging open on one bend, the scariest encounter was coming around one corner and who should be hanging washing out at her cottage but our boss Sally Angus. There is nowhere to hide a bookbus! We just waved and carried on. I can’t remember if there were any consequences, but we never went that way again.’
Reading through the many heartfelt messages dedicated to the bookbus, it’s clear the service has become about much more than just accessibility to books. It’s a weekly event that makes kids excited to get on board and choose a book, that brings families together for storytime and that is a social life line, especially for older folk, to a community of people who care and also love to read and chat. Libraries and the people behind them are part of the ecosystem of services that foster a sense of community, and the bookbus has kept a network of suburbs reading for decades. It’s important to celebrate this, to shout from the rooftops that so many people are benefiting and thriving from services like these. In fact, 7% of Dunedin City Libraries’ issues are attributed to the bookbuses. Four semi-rural schools, ten primary classes, have access to books because of the bookbus.
Many of the submissions pointed out just how devastating it would be to lose the mobile library service. In an age of cost cutting, so-called efficiencies, and bottom lines, our public services can easily become eroded. Take the stance of Christchurch Mayor Phil Mauger who, earlier this year, was ‘looking at library and pool hours and not mowing grass as often’ to cut costs. May we all defeat the dragons of ignorance and keep loving on the rays of sunshine that are our libraries and librarians.
Te Puhi Pukapuka will be at Wild Dunedin’s Nature Dome on Sunday 13 April from 10 am till 4 pm at Forsyth Barr Stadium. Join the Dunedin City Library team for story time and celebrate 75 years of the mobile library service. Find out more here.
This is the first in an occasional series of ‘love letters’ to libraries. If you’d like to pay tribute to your local library (or another library service you know and love!), we welcome your ideas. Please email us on editors@thesapling.co.nz.
Claudia Palmer
Claudia Palmer (Te Rarawa, Te Aupōuri) has a background in campaigning and marketing. After completing the Whitireia Publishing course, she worked for Huia Publishers in Wellington promoting award-winning books and authors. It was during this time, she realised just how life changing great children’s books can be. She now lives in the wildlife capital of Aotearoa, Ōtepoti Dunedin, with her partner where she works as an advocate for nature and taonga species.