Well into its world tour, The Sketchbook Project takes the concept of a mobile library into territory dear to the hearts of artists, illustrators, diarists, and obsessive doodlers. Their Mobile Library is housed in a vehicle that strongly resembles a foodtruck, but contains a selection of books submitted by artists around the world. Visitors can thumb through a collection curated from the Project’s Brooklyn library of 34,000 sketchbooks, contributed from creators in over 135 countries. Currently, the Mobile Library is in the middle of its world tour, traveling the west coast before heading up to Canada.

The Sketchbook Project’s home base is the Brooklyn Art Library, located in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, NY. The Library is a simple storefront lined with shelves upon shelves of sketchbooks, barcoded and searchable by details such as location of origin, media, and topic. Locals can acquire library cards and check out two sketchbooks at a time, or read at the library’s long tables. In addition to the Mobile Truck and Brooklyn Art Library, the Project has a Digital Library, where web users can browse view over 17,000 online sketchbooks.

The Sketchbook Project was founded by new SCAD graduates Shane Zucker and Steven Peterman in Atlanta, GA in 2006, and moved to Brooklyn in 2009. It was conceived as a way of combining hand-made traditions with new Web-based technologies. Illustrators wanting to participate in the Project canapply to submit sketchbooks through March 31st, 2016. The Project also organizes periodic collaborative challenges, such as their current Print Exchange. Participants create and submit 11 5×7 prints on the theme, “Greetings From A Distant Land” and receive back 10 prints, swapped by Project staff from other submissions.

The Sketchbook Project Mobile Library from Art House Co-op on Vimeo.