City library ranks highly at Google City library ranks highly at Google (January 16, 2004)

Internet search engine gives bookmobile $200,000

By Julie O'Shea

Google, the Mountain View-based Internet search engine, has given the city library $200,000 to jump-start the defunct bookmobile program that used to visit local businesses, day care and senior centers on a weekly basis.

Started in 1964, the much-used program, which brought the library to readers who couldn't make it down to the main library on Franklin Street, fell victim to last year's budget cuts and closed up shop in August.

Library services director Karen Burnett said her department had been exploring ways to get the bookmobile back on the road when Google called her out of the blue in early December with its $200,000 offer.

"We are just thrilled," Burnett said. "We are very excited about it."

Cindy McCaffrey, vice president of corporate marketing for Google, said giving the money to the library was not a hard decision.

"People were very concerned about this," McCaffrey said. The bookmobile, which had stopped at the company's Bayshore Parkway campus every other week, was a "very, very popular source at Google.

"The thing that we really wanted to do was to get the program started again," McCaffrey added.

The gift will be enough to purchase a new, walk-on bookmobile van, Burnett said. The van will be smaller than the old one, she added, but will be more efficient to run and easier to park. She estimates the van will cost around $120,000. The rest of the money will go toward keeping the book van running four to five times a week.

Burnett anticipates the new mobile library service will be in operation by fall and stocked with plenty of books for city residents and workers to select.

"It was and is a rather unique business," the librarian said.

Indeed, McCaffrey said many of her company's 1,000 employees would take advantage of the bookmobile's services. Some, she said, would even bring their children when they knew the van would be making a pit stop in front of their building.

Google is all about connecting people with information, McCaffrey said, so it's only fitting that it would donate to a program like the bookmobile.

There is also talk, McCaffrey said, of Google partnering with other local businesses to fund a yearly endowment to make sure the mobile library service doesn't have to worry about any future economic repercussions.

Google recently made a commitment to stay in Mountain View for the next 10 years. The company is currently packing its cubicles and slowly moving into the former SGI campus on Charleston Road.

Contrary to widely published news stories, McCaffrey said Google has made no decisions regarding an initial public stock offering.

Newspapers last week reported that the company's offering was expected to dump $12 billion back into Silicon Valley. However, McCaffrey said this is news to her, adding that the reports were "speculative" pieces.

E-mail Julie O'Shea at joshea@mv-voice.com

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