By: Nick Mau

Every Thursday during open hours of the Whiteaker Community Market, customers of the fall farm stand have the opportunity to check out a book from Hannah Schandelmeier-Lynch. The library that Hannah helps operate is no ordinary library, but a library on wheels. Attached to Hannah’s bike there is a custom-built towable bookshelf, complete with a cover for rain and finished with wood trim. Hannah is involved with multiple aspects of the project, including transporting the library to various locations, attending the library for hours at a time, keeping records of checked-out books, and running the mobile library’s Facebook page with information on library hours and locations. “It’s a nice thing to have available for people so they can have books and they can read something new,” said Hannah, recalling her motivation for dedicating her free time to be a service to her community. Projects such as the mobile library are the kinds of things that keep historic and community oriented neighborhoods such as the Whiteaker neighborhood thriving within themselves.

            Looking back upon how she got involved with the project, Hannah credits her friend Celia with the original idea to create the mobile library. As a student at the University of Oregon, Hannah is found herself seeking an outlet to connect with people outside the scope of her life on campus. She recalls how she was drawn to help run the library on her free time because of this opportunity to put herself out there in the neighborhood and provide a service for people that both inspires people to read and perpetuates a positive cycle of sharing and connecting with the locals. “The commitment is just making sure the library is there for people.”

As the days go by and the library remains open, Hannah sees the local people she has spent her free time lending books to come again to return their books, and often pick out another. She specifically enjoys seeing the people she met previously come again to return their books because of the opportunity to visit and catch-up. Here she is able to hear all about how her new acquittance enjoyed the book and pick up their conversation right where it left off. Many neighborhoods might not operate well under an honor-system return policy like the one used by the mobile library, but Hannah has found that running a locally supported project in a community-centered neighborhood like the Whiteaker is more often than not rewarded with kindness. She envisions development in the future by saying, “I’d love to expand it and make it something where students from the University of Oregon or people in the community help out with.”