Bookmobile Stops at Whole Foods for First Time

Rochester Hills Public Library patrons on the west side of town now a way to check out and return books while bypassing the often heavy construction-related traffic on Walton Boulevard.

The library's Bookmobile will now stop twice a month in the parking lot of in the Village of Rochester Hills. The portable library will return the first and third Wednesday of every, where it will park for an hour starting at 1:15 p.m.

"The construction is terrible," said Gene Williams, retired Rochester Hills resident who lives near the Whole Foods. She previously delayed going back to the library because she had difficulty driving through traffic; she decided to come to the mobile library after reading about it in the paper.

Though the debut of the stop was lightly attended, Michelle Wisniewski, outreach and bookmobile services manager for the Rochester Hills Public Library, said she expects more to come as word gets out about the new stop.

Wisniewski said the mobile library has a little bit of everything, stocking the most popular books in every category in addition to music, video games and movies.

Unlike the library, the Rochester Hills Bookmobile lends out books on a first-come, first-serve basis to anyone with a library card of a participating library. That means no waiting lists for some of the library's hottest items.

Books at the mobile library are checked out for four weeks while movies can be checked out for a period of two weeks.

The first bookmobile was purchased in 2005 using donations gathered by the Friends of the Rochester Hills Public Library as a way to expand by strategically placing access to the library throughout the area. Currently, Wisniewski said the Rochester Hills Bookmobile lends out 85,000 books a year.

Beyond the Whole Foods stop, the mobile library also stops at several other locations in a 72-square-mile area in Rochester Hills and Oakland Township. The variety of the locations of the stop means a greater variety of customers, from more advanced readers near senior centers to children checking out cardboard books at stops near schools.

"What is nice is that three generations of a family can find something for everyone," Wisniewski said.