Bookmobile Front Counter Depth Question

[Ann Plazek]

Hello All,

We have had our bookmobile now for 4 years and my staff and I are all  on the short side and struggle with the depth of our front counter.  I am curious what the typical front counter depth is on your vehicles.  Ours is 28", but I feel like 19-20" would still be plenty of room to work with and not such a stretch to reach over when trying to take books from someone.  It would also give us much needed room to be able to maneuver behind the counter.

Since we struggle with this we most often work from one side of our desk with the dropdown open, but this isn't really the most efficient either.

Has anyone ever modified their front service counter in any way?  I'm guessing this would be more expense than my library would want to tackle, but 

Ann Plazek 

She/Her/Hers 

Outreach Services Manager

Medina County District Library

6625 Wolff Road, Medina, OH 44256

330-722-2490

mcdl.info

[Don, Acore Shelving]

 

Ann,

Thank you for sharing your issue with the front desk.  Acore and our upfitters routinely have difficulty establishing desk sizes which will best serve staff.  We would like to know more about your smaller desk to help our designers model one for possible use with the Acore Shelving system. 

 

Recently, YOUR Wall-Hugger desk concept with working model has been developed and the Acore prototype called "The SideKick", will to be first shown at the ABOS2025.  BY THE WAY, THIS PROTO-TYPE WILL BE GIVEN TO YOUR MEDINA COUNTY DISTRICT LIBRARY UPON COMPLETION OF THE ABOS CONFERENCE. 

 

Thank you again, we hope to hear more from our ABOS Google group for more specific design points.

Don Thompson 

CEO & Designer 

Acore Shelving 

Cell 352-514-0189 Off 904-964-4320 

d...@acoreshelving.net 

---

From: 'Ann Plazek' via ABOS-Outreach <ABOS-O...@googlegroups.com>
Sent: Tuesday, September 23, 2025 3:23 PM
To: ABOS-Outreach <ABOS-O...@googlegroups.com>
Subject: [ABOS-Outreach] Bookmobile Front Counter Depth Question

--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "ABOS-Outreach" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to ABOS-Outreac...@googlegroups.com.
To view this discussion visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/ABOS-Outreach/DM5PR06MB3211797B406197C135349013D51DA%40DM5PR06MB3211.namprd06.prod.outlook.com.

[Ann Plazek]

Don,

Thank you so much for your quick response and follow up!   I hope everyone loves "The Sidekick" as much as we do!!!

Our vehicle is a Farber stepvan built in 2020 - 2021 which was a challenging time in the industry and I recognize that.  Unfortunately I will not be at the conference this year, but I think it is a great opportunity for everyone to talk about design features that work well as well as challenges so that changes can be made for future builds. Planning a build is one of the most important challenge an Outreach Manager or Director will face in their career and most folks may only get to do this once.  Communication during a build is extremely important along the way and I would suggest that if you are not in close proximity to your builder perhaps your facilities team could build a mock up of the space with cardboard so you could have a better sense of the space — something I wish we had done.  I think there could be a very valuable conference presentation on "What we wish we had done instead..." because sometimes you just don't know until you are using the space - much like building a new house.

Attached are a few photos to show our challenges with storage space and the depth as well as height of our front counter which is 40".  In retrospect I would advocate for having an area of the desk that could be lower to better serve children.  We usually have to drop our center counter and stand to serve children.  I also would have given up some knee room space to have a larger drawers/cabinet with marine latches for supplies in closer reach.  The file drawers are tiny and not particularly useful.

Ann Plazek 

She/Her/Hers 

Outreach Services Manager

Medina County District Library

6625 Wolff Road, Medina, OH 44256

330-722-2490

mcdl.info

---

From: Don, Acore Shelving <d...@acoreshelving.net>
Sent: Tuesday, September 23, 2025 7:49 PM
To: ABOS-Outreach <ABOS-O...@googlegroups.com>; Ann Plazek <pla...@mcdl.info>
Cc: Hayden Thompson <hayde...@gmail.com>; acore acoreshelving.net <ac...@acoreshelving.net>
Subject: Re: Bookmobile Front Counter Depth [MORE DETAILS NEEDED]

 

This message originated outside the Medina County District Library organization. Please exercise caution when opening links or attachments or when providing sensitive information or materials.