The Role of Libraries in Bike-Friendly Communities

Take a break from your bike ride to cool off at the library or check out books from a bookmobile on a bike.

Bicycles have been around in one form or another for over two hundred years under various names, like the swiftwalker and the velocipede. In that time, they provided countless people with cheap and effective means of transportation.

But in recent times, the effects of a car-centric society have made bike-friendly communities fewer and farther between. Naturally, it’s important to protect the communities left, and libraries play a vital role in doing so. Here’s how.

Easy Access for Cyclists

For many people using bikes as their main mode of transportation, one of the greatest difficulties they’ll encounter is the distance they have to travel to get anywhere. Countless cities, even those shifting toward a more bike-friendly culture, feel the effects of urban sprawl, with residential areas, businesses, and public facilities separated by miles of road designed to be traversed using a car.

As libraries are designed to be accessible to everyone, they’re typically well within reach of a cyclist. Many people who enjoy biking prefer to have a destination rather than just biking around aimlessly, so for them, there’s no better destination than the library. It’s rarely, if ever, unrealistically far away and serves as a great place to enjoy themselves after they’ve wrapped up their ride.

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Give Cyclists a Chance to Meet and Cool Off

Cyclists may want to take a break from their ride and spend a while in the library to relax and cool off under the AC—and they probably won’t be the only ones there, either. While doing this, they’re likely to meet other cyclists, and they can share their favorite routes, exchange biking playlists, and even plan to cycle together in the future.

The library’s goal of creating a stronger sense of community is more prominent than ever here, giving people not only a chance to learn together but to exercise and enjoy themselves together as well.

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Library Book Bike Programs

Taking things a step further, public libraries in many major cities have started using bikes as portable public libraries, keeping a cart full of books in tow and even providing a wifi hotspot in some cases.

This makes libraries more accessible to the community than ever, giving even people without home internet access a chance to visit the library from anywhere and allowing the library to provide information freely to anybody and everybody.

If you’d like to learn more about how libraries are intertwined with your community or read up on how you can help that community, visit us at EveryLibrary today!

Visit www.everylibrary.org to learn more about our work on behalf of libraries. 

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