Provisions for Growth and Change
It cannot be too strongly urged that a chief caution in planning should be to anticipate and provide for that rapid growth which may strike any American community, large or small, urban or rural; and that development or change of methods which will come even if there is no growth of population. When or how or just where it will come, it is always difficult to foresee. The tide, indeed, seems world-wide. Champneys warns, “Forecast, if possible, and plan in advance. If not, it will be hard to preserve in future a workable home.”[162] Van Name said at St. Louis in 1889, “The present rate of library growth requires far larger provision for the future, in space and in economizing space.”
“Every library in America must continue to grow.”—Eastman.
“One cannot observe the rapid growth of libraries during the last half century without being led to ask in wonder what is to be the result in the future. There is a law affecting the growth of libraries not unlike that of geometric progression. By the principle of noblesse oblige, a library which has attained a certain size is called upon to grow much faster than when it was small. It is difficult to foretell. For years to come libraries will grow rapidly. Ingenuity will bring into use new methods and new apparatus.”—Fletcher.[163]
“Libraries designed to serve the needs of decades to come prove too small before they are fairly occupied.”—Dana.[164]
“The model building of today will be quite out of date tomorrow.”—Marvin.[165]
Perhaps rate of growth cannot be calculated, but it can be shrewdly guessed. It is hard to be too sanguine. Growth in American libraries has oftener been underestimated than the reverse. In an established library you can multiply recent annual growth by twenty-five, for the probable life of the building, and subtract possible withdrawals. But moving into a new building, and growth of the population served, will tend to make needs for space increase in geometrical ratio rather than merely arithmetical, and there are always gifts to be anticipated. So let the sanguine members of your board reckon growth.
Exterior. Provision can be made by buying a lot larger than you will need at first. A plan can be drawn with future wings suggested, or more stories, or an ell. This will require stronger walls, and study of features which could be matched in making changes.
In large libraries, use of sub-cellars, especially for stacks, can be looked to, and sunken stacks, or at least subterranean caves for fuel, can be arranged under that part of the lot outside the building, or even in some cases under the street or an adjoining park. If the experiments now making in various places are successful, this growth downward may be almost as available as growth upward. But see “[Stacks Underground],” and “[Stack Towers],” in later chapters.
Interior. There are several ways for providing for changes inside. If you have enough money, build largely, and space out. Provide more space for books and readers than you can use at once. Make your floor-cases movable, and set them wide apart, to be closed up later as required. Set tables and chairs generously apart, and crowd them together when otherwise you would have to turn away readers. Provide attic and cellar so built and prepared for subsequent finish that they can be used to some purpose when more rooms are wanted.
That reminds me to say that a wise provision is to have as few rigid partitions anywhere, as possible. If you must have any, make them so light, even if sound-proof, that they can all be swept away when it becomes desirable to change.
“Plan a library so that it may be susceptible of inner development,” says Dr. Garnett.[166]
It is always well to plan your shelving so generously as to leave room everywhere for many years’ growth, and so avoid necessity for early rearrangement.
In small libraries, if the book-rooms are built high enough, provision can be made for a second tier of wooden or metal shelves above that first installed. Better always leave them thus high in the projection, side, or corner devoted to floor bookcases.
With very large libraries interior provisions, except in leaving floors or rooms unoccupied at first, and avoiding rigid partitions, will be difficult.
Limitations. In some libraries it is possible to set a limit for desirable growth. For instance, the faculty of the Episcopal Theological School in Cambridge, Mass., could say that they never should want more than seventy-five scholars or 50,000 volumes.[167] In branch libraries it is usual to decide in advance how many books are needed, and to keep this number the same, by withdrawing as many volumes as are added from time to time. Suburban libraries can reduce the normal limit of growth by arranging with their neighboring urban libraries for a co-operative and interloan system, or may unite with them in some such system of segregating useless books in a common catacomb as has been suggested by President Eliot. (See Fletcher.[168])
File Your Plans. Too often, plans for growth carefully made in planning, have not been preserved. When need comes for them, perhaps often when librarian and trustees have been changed, these provisions are not remembered, or if faintly remembered have been laid away where they cannot be found. The wise way is to file your plans away in the library after using them, and include in the portfolio your provisions for change, both card catalogued so fully that they cannot be missed. Even if conditions have changed before alterations are demanded, the original forecast will be found suggestive in making new plans.