Make way for Van Diesel.
Public officials, library staff, support groups, and community members gathered in Library Plaza on Wednesday to celebrate the new Library on the Go van, the second in the Santa Barbara Public Library’s mobile “fleet” of vehicles designed as what Library Director Brandon Beaudette described as “our mobile outreach operation that meets patrons where they are by bringing library services directly onto our streets.”
Dubbed “Van Diesel” by the library staff (check out their delightful Instagram video here) the new van effectively joins the OG of library vans — ”Vincent Van Gogh” — to effectively double the services provided to the community.
Doubling those services provides great value to all the community, not to mention great “bang for the buck.” The purchase of the $300,000 Mercedes-Benz sprinter van was made possible thanks to a grant from the California State Library and a generous donation from the James M. Cox Foundation. It’s an upgrade from the first Library on the Go van, which was funded by the Women’s Fund of Santa Barbara…