How to plan a library building for library work

by Charles C. Soule

Telephones and Tubes

These are most necessary for quick work. All libraries with more than one story, or even more than one room, can use speaking-tubes to advantage. They are inexpensive, and are easily put in while building. If installed at first, they need not cost much, and save many steps, if they be run only from the librarian’s desk to the janitor. For larger libraries, they can connect desk and stack, librarian and assistants, departments with each other. In stacks they are very serviceable, placed next the lift and running both to delivery desk and to janitor’s room. In still larger libraries some form of house-telephone will speed and simplify service, with an exchange desk, switchboard, and special operator.

Consult the local telephone company about the different styles and prices. You will perhaps be surprised to find how cheaply they can be set and run, even as compared with a speaking-tube system.

Dr. Richard Garnett recommends the telautograph for transmitting inquiries and orders,[226] and also says,[227] “In planning large libraries, it will be necessary to take mechanical contrivances into account to a much greater extent than hitherto.”

Less marble columns, fewer dadoes, and more tubes and telephones, would ensure a better working library.

E.
DEPARTMENTS AND ROOMS

In this Book suggestions are made as to location and equipment of every room in a library. Note especially Stack-towers, Carrels, and Sliding Cases.

E.
DEPARTMENTS AND ROOMS

PART I
ADMINISTRATION ROOMS

While books are the substance of a library and readers the object, how to bring them together is the key to arrangement of the plan; therefore the first consideration among rooms is here given to administration.

Except as otherwise specified later, the working rooms ought to be put in the center of the library, in order of processes for handling books and serving readers, and ought to be in the most direct connection possible with each other, with stacks and with reading rooms. Here centers good planning.

Always remember what economy lies in close connections, concentration, and short distances.

Every saving in communication may mean an attendant saved, and a smaller pay-roll.

“Ease and smoothness of administration are to further public service or lessen expense.”—Bostwick.[228]

“They must be in sequence, so that books may be (1) received; (2) catalogued; (3) prepared; (4) shelved, without jumping around from one part to another.”—Idem.[229]

See excellent article by W. K. Stetson on centralized administration, 36 L. J., p. 467.

In his article on Library Buildings, in the U. S. Public Libraries Special Report of 1876,[230] Justin Winsor pictures the preliminary operations of preparing books for the reader—the first steps of administration, as carried out in a large room, surrounded by stalls connected by tramways for book boxes, and supervised by a superintendent from a raised platform in the centre, who directs the successive operations and operators, all under his eye.

This arrangement persists, but except so far as it governs packing and unpacking, is now usually separated into different rooms, all made parts of a suite, connected either horizontally or perpendicularly, and served by special lifts and elevators.

Such rooms for a large library are here described in separate chapters. In smaller libraries practically the same operations are compressed into fewer rooms.

Trustees’ Room

In very small libraries none is necessary; nor need one be set aside, as the library grows larger, until other more necessary rooms are provided for. The trustees as a body do not meet every day, and their committees only meet an hour or so at a time, so that they can well use one of the staff rooms whose occupants can temporarily get busy elsewhere, or use special rooms only occasionally used.

In growing libraries, when rooms have to be set aside for any purposes which do not require constant occupation, any one of these can be used for trustees. Their meetings, and those of their committees, are generally held in late afternoon or evening, when it would not interfere with intermittent processes or infrequent readers. It has always seemed to me that a Local History room would be an excellent refuge for trustees in a building where space had to be economized, especially as local history is a proper function for a small library with either an active librarian, or an active local society, or both.

When the library gets larger, it is well to consider that the trustees represent the public which owns the library. They are usually selected with care for what is held to be the most honorable position in town. They serve without pay. In character, in prominence, in responsibility, in service, their board deserves prominent recognition in planning a building. As they will use their quarters less often than staff or readers use their rooms, they need not take up any space which is desirable for active departments. They can be put anywhere in the building where space can best be spared. But as they are sometimes elderly men, they ought not to be expected to climb many flights of stairs, and in buildings without elevators, should not have to go higher than the second floor.

In furniture and decoration, a deal of money has been wasted on trustees’ rooms. They ought to have a cheerful, cosey, dignified and comfortable room, but as no library ever has enough money for its actual needs, it is willful and sinful waste to devise massive and costly furniture (usually very uncomfortable) and splendid ornament, for the modest gentlemen (and ladies) who will spend a few hours there every month.

Good proportions, cheerful color, good natural and artificial light, a warm carpet perhaps, a ceiling not too lofty, comfortable yet not necessarily expensive furniture, with lockers or hat racks, even a fireplace if the architect thinks it would add to the effect of the room (here a fireplace would be most permissible); these will make an apartment where trustees can be at their best, wise, sensible, never contentious or captious.

Even then, it does not seem necessary to set aside an otherwise useless room entirely to a board which occupies it so seldom. Think if it cannot be put to some special use, for clubs, or if that would desecrate it, to housing some special collection not likely to be wanted at the hours of board meetings. By all means shelve it round about—there is no decoration in a library like books in good binding, even in bright cloth covers,—and let it be one of the semi-public rooms, to be shown with pride; or sparingly used by those readers or students who deserve to be ranked as users with trustees.

Librarian’s Room

Though the delivery room be the center of service, the librarian’s room is the center of direction. Whether it should be close to the delivery room or to any special department, depends first upon the size of the library, then upon its class and methods. Sometimes it is thought well for the librarian not only to be in close touch with his staff, but to be accessible to the public. If he does not wish to use his time entirely as an information clerk, a position may be assigned to him quite apart from staff or public rooms, on any floor. Modern systems of tube or telephone (which should always be liberally provided to keep all departments in close call), will sufficiently overcome distance to enable him to summon to his room anyone he wishes to see. Champneys even suggests an extra exit as an escape from bores, if they succeed in getting in.

Where his position is to be, in the building, it is for the librarian to decide, provided the trustees approve him sufficiently to keep him to run the new building. He is to run it, and he ought to have the place which will let him run it most easily, according to the methods he may wish to follow. No one else should compel him to go where he will be hampered by any discomforts.

As to arrangements and furniture, there will be needed such tables as the size of the room may allow, such chairs as the occupant may require, as well as enough for visitors, wardrobes for his clothes, closets for his stores (see list of stores which may be needed in a stationery cabinet—Duff-Brown[231]), private toilet room, a space (usually) for a small fireproof safe for his and the trustees’ valuable immediate papers, such wall shelving as he may require for his personal books and bibliography, telephone and tube space handy to his seat, a keyboard for keys, and enough free floor space for such revolving bookcases and such floor cases as he may further require, not to forget passage room for visitors.

As to location, so as to arrangement, the librarian should here have a free hand, however much he must yield his preferences elsewhere. It is his room, and should be a part of his individuality. To allow this to him, is the first and longest step toward good administration during the whole life of the building.

In England, a private residence is often provided in the building for the librarian, but seldom or never in America.

Ante-room. In a library of some size, a comparatively small room, or even two or three low rooms are very much better for the librarian than one large, high room. If there is an assistant librarian or private secretary, he needs a separate room, and if there is to be a private stenographer, she can share this outer room, and either part of it, or still another room can be assigned to staff or public, waiting for their turn of admittance. Indeed, a suite of three not very large rooms is quite ideal, especially as many of the librarian’s impedimenta can be distributed over the larger shelf and closet space available.

Heads of Departments. In a large library with departments, each of their heads should have his own little room or rooms, according to his duties and the bulk of his records, close to the center or edge of the groups of rooms he is to manage, with such tube and telephone communication as will place him in close touch with the librarian, with his inferiors, and with such other departments as he aids in serving.

Other Staff Quarters

Staff work is divided by Bostwick[232] into,—

Administrative, which would cover librarian, his assistants, and heads of departments.

Contact with the public, including those of advisory, educational, or disciplinary duties.

Clerical, subordinates in offices and catalog departments.

Buying and distribution, including those engaged in preparing and circulating books.

Care of Building.

This would indicate a group or number of rooms for each class, the “administrative” (already treated) and “buying and distribution” somewhat clustered, the “clerical” and “contact with the public” distributed among the others, and the “care of building” generally centered in the basement.

In addition to these classes or groups, a general room or rooms will be needed in a large library for staff meetings, staff lectures and staff training school. One large room should serve alternately for all such purposes, especially if divided by sliding or folding partitions to make of it either a large or small room as desired. Special audience or school furniture is needed here.

Public Waiting Rooms

These are not wanted in small libraries, where the space left in front of the delivery desk will provide for casual visitors as well as for those waiting for books.

In large libraries, it is well to provide a place where visitors can rest and have the privilege of talking, and where members of the staff may see friends, if necessary. This is best near the main entrance. Indeed, a vestibule demanded by the architecture can be utilized as such a room, and if it can also be made a show room for book rarities and curiosities in glass cases, a museum for statues, busts and portraits, and a general porter’s hall and information office, it will justify its existence and relieve the working rooms in the library of many embarrassments. Here, also, may be bestowed grand staircases and all cumbrous architectural features that cannot be wholly barred out.

Such very public rooms, as distinguished from what might be called service waiting rooms like the librarian’s ante-rooms and the space left before the delivery desk for the applicants who have sent in slips and are waiting for their books—are better outside of the partitions of the working library. The latest plans for the Brooklyn central library provide, on a triangular lot, for an apex which seems to fill this need and some architectural features, without seriously infringing on working or service areas.

Stenography Rooms

Staff. Besides the private typewriter of the librarian, there will be others in large libraries for heads of departments (indeed, wherever there used to be a clerk or secretary, there must now be a machine), and a number in the catalog suite, ranging up into the tens or twenties, as more or less books are being put through various processes. These all may be called staff stenographers.

Even in libraries of moderate size, where there is a possibility of gifts or other growth which will require special cataloguing, it is wise to leave room in the cataloguing suite for extra stenographers, when suddenly wanted.

Public. There is also needed in large libraries, provision in private study rooms for readers or authors, and some special rooms for public stenographers on call, ready for extra staff or readers’ demands for copying, dictation, or anything legitimately connected with the use of books. Such rooms are among those to be placed on mezzanine floors or in a special wing or corridor. Like music rooms, they ought to be built with sound-proof or sound deadening floors, walls and ceiling; for readers who are not dictating are often and excusably sensitive about the clicking of others.

Place for Catalog Cases

This chapter covers the space to be allowed in rooms for the catalogs themselves.

Very large libraries require whole rooms for catalogs alone, usually one room for the general card catalog and another for the Library of Congress cards.

In all but very large libraries, card catalogs for the staff and for the public must be provided for in some way. They can be separate, but the form most economical of space is the double-ender set into the wall between cataloguer’s room and delivery department, with drawers which can be pulled out from either end. The obvious inconvenience is that they may be wanted at both ends at once. Notwithstanding this, they are much used, to save space if not labor.

A nice problem in planning is the placing of card-catalog cases not too far from the delivery desk, where they will not interfere with other uses, and where they will get ample light. The most usual way is to set them against partition walls, with space in front for a narrow table to which drawers can be moved and rested during use.

Another convenient arrangement is to make a sort of floor case, a wide table in the middle of the floor, with catalog cases back to back on top, leaving a ledge on each side and at the ends, where the table projects.

Stools are used with these rather than chairs, mainly because they take up less room and are not used for long periods.

The English books speak of other styles of catalogs, but we use no other form except (rarely) different kinds of printed catalogs, which are kept loose on tables or desks.

As to floor space required for catalog cases, see that heading later on. Placing them is a nice and critical question of planning.

Note that a Library of Congress card-catalog room separate is called for by the Brooklyn Public Library.[233]

Cataloguing Room

In small libraries, cataloguing has to be done in the librarian’s rooms or at the delivery desk. In larger libraries one large room or a suite of rooms is needed, and requires careful planning by an experienced librarian. Ample light is naturally the first requisite. North light is most regular and less glary, but is somewhat cold and cheerless. Large windows, or what is practically one window along one side of a room, the windows running up from the level of the tables clear to the ceiling, are best. The working tables (better single or double desks perpendicular to the windows) should occupy the window side, with service tables (trestles will do) in the next space. Then floor cases for bibliography and books in transit, also perpendicular to the light, and wall cases beyond with a ledge, will conveniently furnish the room. If, as usual, the different processes of handling books are performed in this room, not only cataloguing proper, but selection, ordering, accessioning, shelf-listing, collation, labelling, numbering, and marking or covering, must be foreseen, in due succession. A lift at one end from the packing room should bring the books, to follow the order of work, over bins, or tables, or desks, or shelves, leading either to the delivery desk or the stack. One room is often not enough—a suite of rooms is required, perhaps up and down stairs. (Do not be tempted to use circular stairs; they are criminal; see under that head, [p. 177].) See the John Hay Library plans, for a central “stack,” so to speak, of such rooms, planned for speedy and economical service.[234]

For order of work, see Winsor,[235] and Bostwick[236] who enumerates other processes. This suite is a cosmos in itself, for which no architect unadvised could possibly arrange.

Even with an expert librarian to advise, the local librarian and the local corps of cataloguers ought to be consulted, and their methods and tastes should be heeded. An irritating incidence of light, an awkward stretch or carry to the shelves, a clumsy arrangement of desk-surfaces or window seats, might disconcert the best of cataloguers, and so far spoil the building.

See view of the cataloguing room in the Library of Congress, L. C. Report for 1901, p. 224.

Delivery Room

This is the department, under our American system, which in all libraries should be on the ground floor, and as short a distance as possible from the front door. In small libraries, it should be the center of the ground floor space, where that whole floor, and the top or foot of such stairs as there are, can be supervised by one attendant. Miss Marvin[237] locates it approximately as 12 feet (minimum) from the door, 16 to 20 feet “to the rear shelves,” but this of course depends on the size of the building.

Oscar Bluemner[238] thinks that the counter, the catalog, and applicants need not take up more than 10 × 15 feet in a small library.

In somewhat larger libraries the need of central location holds. The book shelves are generally behind the desk, one reading room (or two sober-reading rooms) on one side, another (or two where a certain amount of stir and noise may be expected) on the other. The space in front, from desk to door, should be planned for most of the stir and necessary noise, except that of open shelves. If there is a small vestibule separated from the delivery room by a glass partition, drafts and dust will be shut out, and a space allowed for the flutter of entrance and exit, leaving the space from door to desk for book applicants, querists, passage to other rooms, catalog case, bulletins, waiting, and such other uses as may be assigned to it.

Champneys[239] warns that the space here should be calculated for the maximum use at any time of day or evening, not for an average. Of course, so noisy a room cannot be reckoned on for any kind of reading, although if large enough such guides as directories, railway time tables, local maps, etc., might be used here to advantage.

Such a delivery desk should not be put in a room intended for study or quiet reading, unless perhaps in colleges, where stir may be expected as classes come and go every hour; but even here the entrances and exits should be put where the delivery desk stir and catalog use are on one and the same side, leaving the centre and other sides for readers, to be as undisturbed as possible.

In large libraries this delivery room can have more and roomier facilities, such as settees for those waiting for books. In the Providence Public, there is an Information desk on one side, a Registration desk on the other, near the front door. It should still be on the ground floor and not far from the outside entrance. More people flock here than elsewhere, and the less tramping through corridors they do, the better for them, the readers, and for the cleanliness of the premises. When other rooms or passages open out of the delivery room, a platform slightly raised for the desk will aid supervision.

Light. To get a sufficiently central position for delivery room and strong enough light on desk and catalog, seems to be, judging by inspection of libraries and plans, an especially difficult problem; but it should not be insoluble to a clever librarian and a bright architect.

The English plans do not help us much with ideas, for their system is herein different from ours. “Fewer people go to the lending department than to the reading room,” says Duff-Brown,[240] while with most of our American libraries all readers get to these rooms through or past the delivery room. And in a “barrier lending library,” as Champneys calls it, the counter is much longer than we use, even if there is no “indicator” to elongate it.

As the size, location and relative connections of the delivery-room largely determine the convenience of the whole building, the shape, capacity and practicableness of the delivery desk determine the excellence of this department. See [p. 348].

Here the practical and ingenious librarian has his best chance in planning.

Janitor

The janitor in any library has important functions. In the smallest he is the only assistant, and can be of great service to the lone librarian in service, supervision and in substitution when she is away. In a library of any size he is housekeeper, not only assisting in handling books, but running the heating and lighting systems, superintending or performing all services of cleanliness, and often acting as special policeman in preserving order. He deserves a room of his own, even if it be a simple one in the basement. In large libraries he has a small residence suite, and is always on the premises as day janitor and night watchman. See Bostwick, p. 284, where he advises janitor’s private residence in all libraries except very small ones. But are janitor’s families always germane? I should say, only in very large libraries is it best to provide a janitor’s residence suite in the building. But in most libraries he has a home elsewhere, with only an office in the library. In this case he needs for himself only a table, tool bench, chairs, a closet for clothes and brooms, a box for tools, and a snug toilet room.

Packing room. Winsor[241] assigns this room to the basement, “a large hall, with raised platform in the center for superintendent, with stalls about the walls for successive processes, with rails running past them for book trucks.” But most of the processes he describes are now prosecuted near the catalog room or suite. The packing room is located in some convenient part of the basement, directly under the other administration rooms, with which it has direct communication by tubes and lifts. It should have a separate door to a carriageway, and in large libraries can have a package platform and freight doors opening out of it, for loading and unloading boxes of books.

The uses assigned to this room are generally packing and unpacking, central provisions for cleaning, light repairing of books and furniture, laying out for binder. Its furniture can be scant and simple: work tables or trestles against any free wall space, trucks, an adjacent closet or two, good windows on one or two sides, for light on processes, some shelves for laying out books in transit.

Cleaning. Here is a good central place for the paraphernalia of these operations, brushes, pails, cloths, and the like, not forgetting closets for the clothes of the scrubwoman.

See Bostwick on Cleaning.[242]

Binding and Printing

Bindery. Every library has to have a lot of repairing and binding done. Is it better to have your own plant on the premises or to contract to have it done elsewhere? E. R. N. Matthews[243] says that out of forty-seven English libraries he inquired of, twelve had binderies. He endorses the idea, having installed one at a new branch for his own system, in a separate building, with plant he enumerates, bought second hand for £50.

In small libraries it is easy to decide; nothing except simple repairing by the janitor can be done at home. Whatever has to be done from time to time can be sent out on contract. In view of the space taken up, the bulky and noisy machinery, the cost and trouble of selecting and storing stock, the danger of labor troubles and fires, and the bad odors of glues, the ownership of a bindery would naturally be put off until it can be proved to be a great economy in time and money. Champneys,[244] following Duff-Brown,[245] says that “Binderies are not required except in very large libraries.” I say from considerable business experience, save yourself cost, risk and trouble, by not trying the experiment.

If you must have a bindery, a good place for it is the basement, in or next to the packing room, where books are being handled. Some authorities suggest the attic, but it seems to me that the quiet and top light of the upper floor make it too valuable for finer purposes, to be spared for such “base mechanical use.”

Every sizable library ought to have at least a bindery repair-room or nook for repair work in the janitor’s or packing room, where one or two skilled workmen or girls of your own staff can do light repairs, pasting and the like. But this is the limit of work in the building wisdom requires you to provide for.

See M. W. Straight, “Repairing Books.”[246]

See E. R. N. Matthews, “Library Binderies.”[247]

See H. T. Coutts, “The Home Bindery.”[248]

Printery. So with printing. Very large libraries may have a complete outfit, but, as Bostwick says,[249] “a library of any size may well have a small outfit for printing letter heads, envelopes, cards, pockets, book plates, etc.” This may be in the same room as the bindery down below. If to be installed for the first time, and the librarian has not had personal experience, a practical binder and printer should be consulted as to space, light and fittings required.

Miss Marvin writes to me, “I have liked a suggestion made by Mr. Doyle, architect of the Portland (Or.) Public Library. He feels it a mistake to plan for all administrative work and storage of books not frequently used, in the central library, built on expensive land with no space to spare.... I have never known a public library practical enough to build a warehouse on inexpensive land near the edge of a town for the storage of books, or the receipt of books on which clerical work is to be done before distribution to the branches.... These details for school collections, traveling library collections, and other clerical work, as well as binding, repair, etc., had just as well be removed from the central library, and the space there used for reading rooms and necessary offices.”

[See Matthews’ mention of a central bindery in a branch in England.]

This is worth considering, provided the need of removal is urgent. There are administrative questions to be considered, however, besides cost of land or construction; such as service, care, carriage, etc.

The larger the building, and the more stories, the more opportunity there is, by exercising economy of space and cleverness of arrangement, to find room there for these distributing functions, which are easiest controlled under central supervision and close to the books.

One thing I would never do—consent to such removal until every superfluous architectural area, in vestibules, corridors, staircases, etc., had been eliminated, and the building reduced to its lowest possible denomination for necessary central work.

Room for Service of Branches

In large libraries, room must be provided for laying out, shipping and receiving books for branches, deliveries, traveling libraries and all other kinds of outside activities. How much space these may require may be inferred from the fact that the Travelling Library office of the New York Public Library has a stock of fifty thousand volumes and seventeen employees.

It should either have direct shipping doors, or should open into the packing room, with good access to the shipping facilities there.

Besides tables, desks and shelving for the general use of superintendent and clerks, with corner for telephones to the branches, etc., and to other departments of the main library, there will have to be bins for such dispatch service. As the books come here from the stack, nearness to it, or some form of mechanical connection with it, will save much time. Here, as in so many other departments of every new large library, is opportunity for individual planning.

• See Winsor, P. L., 1876, 470.
• ” Bostwick, L. J., 1898, p. 14.
• ” L. J., 1898, Conf. 98, 101.
• ” Cole, U. S. Ed’l Rept., 1892-3, Vol. 1, p. 709.
• ” Wilson, R. E. P. L., 1901, p. 275.
• ” Duff-Brown, pp. 350-356.
• ” Sutton, C. W., 6 L. A. R., 67.

Comfort Rooms

Rest and Lunch. In England always, and oftener here than formerly, even in small libraries, a room or rooms are provided for the relaxation of the staff. “Especially for women, humanity and a wise economy prompt comfortable rest rooms, as they are not as uniformly in robust health, and are more subject to sudden indisposition.”—(Bostwick.[250]) In view of the good these can do, in refreshing attendants, and keeping them in the building, as well as the fact that such rooms can be tucked into space not really needed for anything else, and also because of the moderate expense of fitting them up, it seems a great pity to cut them out of plans, as I have known building committees to do from false ideas of economy. A room for rest and lunching, a tiny “kitchenette” adjoining, with gas stove, one room if you can for men, another for women; or in smaller libraries a common room for a library mess, will do a deal toward infusing an esprit de corps into the whole staff. A timely cup of tea will soothe the nerves and stimulate the jaded to renewed vigor. This is so much a matter of housekeeping that the advice of the ladies of the corps can wisely be taken as to equipment, including store closet. They can be trusted to get everything needed into little space, at little cost.

See article in Public Libraries[251] on “Comfort in a Library,” where it is said a room 6×6 can be made to serve.

Wraps. As far as clothes are concerned, the staff have got to be given cleanly and satisfactory places to leave hats, coats, umbrellas and overshoes during working hours. These should be in the basement, or some place not so far through corridors as to have much tracking of mud. If they can be afforded, ventilated wardrobe cupboards, with a shelf above low enough to hold the prevalent style of ladies’ hats, a box below for rubbers, and interval enough between for a long wrap or fur coat, should be provided for each person; private cupboards for all private rooms; staff cupboards in the staff rest room, each one with lock.

For the public, a convenient umbrella stand (automatic locks will improve it), and rubber pigeon-holes near the entrance will prevent dripping around. There are various makeshifts—racks for hats under chairs, coat rails behind chairs, or at the end of tables (see Tables, [p. 344], and Chairs, [p. 346]) or hat racks in passages, and the like. In the larger libraries, where coat rooms become necessary, they can be slipped into narrow rooms under staircases or in passages near the vestibule.

“Every reading room should have hooks or trees for coats and hats, and stands for umbrellas.”—Eastman.

“In small libraries coat rooms should open from the delivery room, overlooked from the desk.”—Marvin.[252]

Lavatory. Need of frequent wash bowls on all floors has been spoken of elsewhere. A common lavatory for women and a separate one for men, open both to public and staff, is a great convenience, and may render fewer separate wash bowls necessary,—a desideratum as far as cost goes, for plumbing is a great expense, and part of planning is to concentrate and reduce to a minimum “stacks” of plumbing. For this reason water fixtures on separate floors should be superimposed rather than scattered.

Sanitary Facilities

These must be furnished separately for men and women of the staff, but whether or not they need be provided for the public is a question both here and in England. Miss Marvin[253] is positive that public toilet rooms are a great nuisance, and should be omitted always, at all events from the main floor. Burgoyne[254] reports opinion divided, but thinks them advisable where a separate attendant can be afforded. Is it not mainly a matter of size and location? Large libraries must provide them for large throngs; libraries of medium size must offer some refuge for serious readers who have to spend many hours over their books; small local or branch libraries, whose users live not so far away, may omit them. The trouble and expense are against them, convenience and health are in their favor. If the park board or public health authorities will provide them somewhere near, the problem is solved. Where they can be avoided in small libraries, and where children throng, much trouble of personal oversight will be saved. If they must be installed, here is certainly a problem to be solved in convenience, separation, and casual supervision of entrances and exits.

Vehicles

Automobiles can be ranged at the curb in front of the library; they lock or care for themselves. Hitching-posts in rural districts will tether horses. Bicycles, not so much in evidence as they were once, may be left in racks in front, or in some place provided for them in lobby, or inside the rear entrance in the cellar.

In a large library, with courtyard, or even without, an inclined approach to the basement is possible. In St. Louis it runs from one street corner, down along a side of the building, then turns into an open underground entrance to the basement. Such a passageway takes from the street the library’s vehicles for branch service, etc., and if there is space inside, and the surrounding streets are narrow, it might well give safety for visitor’s vehicles.

Duff-Brown[255] thinks bicycles are best housed outside. Champneys[256] says, “don’t allow them in corridors.”

In busy thoroughfares of large cities, or, indeed, in small cities in this age of street Juggernauts, provision may well be made for safe ingress and egress for decrepit readers near the curbstones. Some forethought, taken by architect in conjunction with street-car officials, would land many users in the new building without much of the flurry and danger which often hovers over the approaches.

PART II
BOOK STORAGE

The several rooms will be treated separately, also different methods of shelving. The phrase “book rooms” is not used herein as in England, where book store or book room means only book storage, as distinguished from staff rooms and reading rooms, but will include all kinds of shelving, whether used for book storage only or combined with handling and reading.

In an article on Book-storage by H. Woodbine in a recent number of The Library Association Record,[257] he states the factors of past development as,—

• 1. Economy of space.
• 2. Economy of cost.
• 3. Expansibility.
• 4. Adjustability.
• 5. Safety from fire.
• 6. Protection of books (from pests, dirt, damp, etc.)
• 7. Convenience in service.

It is well to bear all these in mind when planning any library, though I should put the last first, and add cleanliness. They would serve as comprehensive tests of all kinds of shelving, wooden or metal; wall, floor, or stack. They are such important details in library service that I will take up the different forms of shelving in considerable detail.

Shelving, Generally

General rules in shelving are: (1) No book should be above reach of hand from floor. This means about 6½ feet (less in children’s rooms) or 7½ feet to cornice, or top of top space. Don’t use steps or ladders, they are obstructive and troublesome to use.

(2) Uprights should not be more than three feet apart, to avoid sagging, and weight in handling. Somewhat less is sometimes advised, never more.

(3) All shelves should be of the same measurements and interchangeable, for obvious reasons, throughout the library. Unadvised architects are apt to fill nooks and spaces with shelving to suit. This may not be so objectionable in fixed shelving, but is fatal with movable shelves.

(4) Shelving should be movable as well as adjustable. Private libraries and very small libraries can get along for a while with fixed shelving, but when books of different sizes accumulate, and close classification is adopted, movable shelving is necessary.

(5) Edges and corners of shelves and supports should be rounded. If hands or books strike sharp edges roughly, they suffer.

(6) There should be no projections to catch clothing. Watch this, especially in stacks.

(7) In shelving or supports, do not leave projections to catch dust. This is often a fault of carved end-uprights.

(8) Have both upper and lower shelves accessible and well lighted for easy inspection. Wherever there is ample room, use of only the breast-high shelves is more convenient both for inspection and for handling.

(9) The old-fashioned ledge is not needed, except in a few instances. It unnecessarily widens the aisle above, interfering with close storage. Wide books can be stored elsewhere; and space to lay books down in handling can be provided near by.

(10) The average dimensions of shelves[258] are well settled by custom; e.g., Length (as above), not over three feet; Depth, eight inches, except for special sizes of books (see later); Thickness; for wooden shelves, ⅞ inch finished, (1 inch stuff, planed); Interval, Wood or metal 10 inches (11 inches top to top of wooden shelves) for octavos and duodecimos, though one advantage of movable shelves is the possibility of variation if desired anywhere.

(11) No doors of any kind are used in modern library bookcases, except where dust is to be excluded from delicate books, or thieves are to be excluded from rare books. Doors are an impediment to use.

Shelf-bases. To save books in sweeping, a four-inch solid base is usually provided in all lands of shelving. In unusually high shelves, this base projects as a step, but it is unsightly thus, and just so much as it projects it narrows the aisles and promotes stumbling.

See Fletcher, Public Libraries.[259]

Fixed or Movable. As stated above, fixed shelving is somewhat cheaper and more easily made, and will serve well in very small libraries. In setting up movable shelving a row of shallow holes an inch apart is bored an inch from the front and from the rear edge of the inside uprights. To support the shelves, projecting pegs of various kinds are inserted in these holes at any desired intervals. There are several patents, the most popular one being a metallic pin with shoulder, which may be turned over for slight alteration of interval. Plain picture screw-eyes, with the eyes turned flat, are favorites in some libraries, and are cheap. Accuracy is necessary in boring the holes, and experiments are advisable as to the fit and steadiness of the pins, so that the shelves will not be liable to tip or fall.

Wood or Metal. In small libraries there is no need at all of metallic cases or shelving and it is absurdly wasteful to buy them too soon. Wooden shelving is cheaper, easier put up by local builders, and though it may occupy a trifle more space, is serviceable and strong enough until superimposed stories of shelving become necessary. Even two stories of wood can be easily managed. If you want more than two stories to use as a stack, you must have iron or steel. There are, of course, many advantages in metal when you have to come to it, though it is more costly. It saves a certain amount of space; it does not obstruct light or ventilation so much as thicker material; it is more fireproof; shelves are more easily moved.

Metal in stacks is universal in larger libraries in America, so is wood in small libraries. In England wood seems much more used in large libraries than with us.

Hard wood is not necessary for shelving, the cheaper kinds of soft wood will do, and are easier set. No backing is necessary in any form of book case, except as a brace, or for appearance, or against a brick or stone wall.

“Use no paint, but varnish and rub thoroughly.”—Poole.[260]

“Few village libraries need spend money for steel shelving. It costs twice as much as oak; four or five times as much as some woods. Wooden cases are movable, steel not; with wood you can shift and add. You would not prefer steel in your home.... For libraries of less than 30,000 volumes, wood is better.”—Eastman.[261]

In planning small buildings do not let manufacturers lead you into the expense of putting in metallic shelving or fixtures. Wood answers every need as well, and often better, and is much cheaper. Miss Marvin says,[262] “No stack should be included in a building costing under $20,000.” I should put the limit higher, and say “No metallic stack is either necessary or desirable while wooden wall shelving and floor shelving will hold the books in the library.”

Ledges. In the early wooden shelving for libraries, ledges, “counter ledges,” so called from their being the height of an ordinary “counter,” were considered essential. Dewey[263] says: “These have a double use. They give a greatly needed shelf on which readers may lay books for consultation or while reaching others, and for the pages in getting and putting back books.”

These ledges do not appear so much now in floor-cases or stacks. They still survive, however, in wall-shelving.

But they served serious needs in handling books and have been seriously missed since they disappeared from use. See an article on a proposed substitute in stacks, under the title “Carrel,” p. 286, later. This feature might also be used with wooden floor-cases when lighted by “true stack windows.”

Labels, Pins, see articles in Library Notes.[264]

Head-room. It is best not to build floor-shelving, even in low rooms, quite up to the ceiling, but to leave some room over the tops of the books on the top shelf for free ventilation. But Dewey said at the 1887 Conference, “Why not leave it out—use all space for shelving, with artificial ventilation?” This might apply to the head-room usually left at the top of stack rooms. But how about heat? And in most libraries there is no effective artificial ventilation or forced draft. And in many rooms outside the stack, it will not be necessary to shelve quite up to the roof.

Shelves High or Low. The rule is, as stated, 7½ feet in height. In many old libraries, and in a few newer ones, higher cases are used, in order not to waste upper space in a high room, wherever this space is not needed for ventilation or diffused light. This is very unfortunate in inspecting or handling the books. To overcome the difficulty of seeing and getting at the highest shelves, various forms of steps or step ladders, or base steps and high handles on the uprights are in use which can be investigated and adopted when occasion requires, as it never should arise in a new building. If such shelving is inherited, or must be used, it would be best to use these shelves, too high to reach by hand, for storing sets of books or magazines rarely wanted. Or a gallery can be built half way up to avoid the awkward use of ladders.

As books to be inspected are best nearly opposite the eye of a reader standing or sitting, live books would better not be stored on lower shelves in any open-access cases. These shelves nearest the floor might be used, therefore, for similar sets not often needed.

Miss Marvin[265] advises uniform height for wall-shelving all over the building.

Low bookcases, “dwarf bookcases,” both in wall-shelving or floor cases, are often used, for different reasons, especially to serve as partitions, and have not the disadvantages of cases too high. In floor-cases, the top can be used as a convenient ledge. In this form, low cases can be set anywhere on the floor without seriously obstructing light, ventilation, or supervision, and low cases can be used against the wall when high-set windows are needed to throw light further across a room.

Unusual Shapes or Sizes of Books. Minimos, (sizes under the ordinary duodecimos) are so unusual that they can be shelved at the ordinary intervals; and if a set or lot of such small books come together, movable shelves can be closed together, without much waste of depth (or by doubling back, with no waste).

Folios and quartos occur in all libraries, in the smallest as books of reference, like dictionaries and atlases; in larger libraries they may come anywhere. Formerly, the lower shelves in all cases were made wider, with a ledge above, but this made the aisles so much wider than was necessary for shoulder room above, that ledges are not now much used in floor-shelving or stacks. Instead, special shelving is provided not far off on each floor, and slips or dummies put on the shelves to indicate where the larger volumes ought to come in the regular classification, and where they can be found when wanted.

This special shelving is often put along the walls, but in late stacks I have found it convenient at both ends of each story. The necessary ledge can be widened without much sacrifice of space, into a shelf at table height, which can be put to many purposes, part of it at one end being cut into to give room for the stack stairs, which usually rob either books or users of more room elsewhere. In other rooms, with wooden shelving, there is almost always a convenient recess or end, where quarto and folio shelving can be put without crowding the other cases. Indeed, when designing a library building, one thing to watch for is, where such shelving can be stowed away near at hand, with the most economy of space. In floor-cases, wooden or metal, occasional large books can be laid across two adjoining shelves.

As to dimensions, Mr. Poole’s recommendations in 1876[266] still hold good: a ledge about 34 inches high, with two shelves below, 18 and 16 inches high for folios, 16 inches deep, and as many shelves as the case will allow above, 12 inches high and 10½ inches deep. Burgoyne says,[267] 21 inches high for folios, 13 high for quartos. These are extreme. Dewey recommends 12 × 10 inches for quartos; for folios just double octavo measurement; large folios to be laid on their sides.[268]

If movable shelving is installed, it will be possible to shelve the exceptional books upright or flat, as their size and character requires.

Burgoyne[269] advises padding flat folio shelves. The British Museum uses cowhide; other libraries, canton flannel (bad) with falls.

Elephant folios will require special roller shelves.

Shelves in Reading Rooms

“The books most used should be stored around the walls of the reading-rooms.”—(Miss Marvin.[270]) This has been a common custom, but Mr. Dana has suggested that such shelving is out of place in reading-rooms. So H. T. Hare, in 8 The Lib. Asso. Record:[271] “The placing of books around the walls wastes floor space otherwise available for readers.” In this opinion I concur,[272] for the double reason that it bars out just so many readers, and also it necessitates movement which interferes with serious reading. As to the former objection, take a room 30 × 40 with a perimeter of 140 feet, less say 10 feet for doors, 130 feet net: If this is shelved all around, the shelving with the usual ledge, and the three feet space in front of it needed for access, inspection and passing, four feet in all, will take up 456 square feet, out of a total area of 1200, nearly two-fifths. Without the wall shelving, the room would hold tables for that many more readers—the use for which it is intended. As to the latter consideration, to get at the books every attendant fetching or returning or cleaning them, every reader consulting them, has to pass before or beside or close back of some other reader who is trying to abstract himself at a desk. If stored somewhere else in floor shelving or in a stack close by, the books would not take up more space, would be more accessible, and less in the way.

If a serious reading room can open directly into an open-shelf floor of a stack, no wall-shelving will be necessary.

The second objection would, of course, not apply so much to rooms for light reading where more or less motion and noise are expected, and less serious study is usual.

Class and Study Rooms. Here wall-shelving for reference books permanently or class books temporarily required, and sometimes floor shelving also, or a combination of wall-shelving with occasional projecting cases, like shallow alcoves, opposite good light, will be required. The purpose of each room defines its needs in arrangement and shelving, as also in staff-rooms and all special rooms. In libraries of sufficient size, each such room should have telephone connection with the staff, and if possible separate lifts or corridor railway service.

Wall-Shelving

The earliest book storage was in cupboards or alcoves, the latest is in floor cases, but the persistent form between and even now is that of shelving around the walls of rooms. Mr. Dana and I object to it around reading rooms, but it now prevails, and perhaps it will still prevail even there. Certainly it will always be serviceable in most of the rooms of a small or large library. It was formerly continued even in combination with floor-cases or stacks, but it is vanishing from such book rooms to maintain its position sturdily wherever floors are not for shelves, but for tables.

In this form, the old-fashioned shelf-ledge survives, with folio or quarto shelving, or sometimes cupboards or bins below, and narrower octavo shelving above. The ledge is found serviceable in temporary examination of books and for resting them in transit.

“Every available foot of wall space should be utilized for shelving, between the windows and under the windows.”—Marvin.[273] [But not unless light comes from the other side. See below. And where there is steam heat, the space under the windows is best for radiators.]

Wall-shelving ought always to be opposite and not next to windows, because direct light in the eyes blinds the reader so that he cannot distinguish the books. But if light comes from both sides of the room, both sides can have wall cases.

Closed Cases. In private libraries and in some rare book collections in public libraries, bookcases have locked sliding doors, either glazed or with strong wire mesh (for ventilation), too small a mesh to slip books through.

It is better to back wall-shelving with wood whenever placed against brick or stone walls, to protect the books from damp and stain.

I have known buildings where the architect put a dado of expensive wood around rooms where wall-shelving was to be put up at once or was sure to come soon. This was, of course, a willful waste, as plain sheathing, to serve as a back for the shelving, would have been far better.

Floor-Cases

Floor-cases, as we use them, first appeared apparently in Leyden about A.D. 1600.[274] Their use in America can be traced to the pressure for space in the old libraries, just before the birth of the stack, which is only floor-cases built up into stories. As the term “floor-case” is used, it covers all bookcases set out from the wall across the floors, usually in parallel rows perpendicular to the windows, but sometimes radial or irregular. The cases are always double, back to back, their dimensions in each front being just those of wall-cases. The backs are usually open for light and ventilation, but are sometimes wired or wainscoted with wood. If backs are not used in floor-cases, some bracing is needed to make them rigid. The aisles between vary in width from three feet for service to six feet for open access, though service is possible in narrower spaces than three feet, and open access, with good light, does not absolutely require six. It is recommended by the authorities that cases should not exceed fifteen feet in length. Whenever longer rows are wanted, cross aisles at about that interval should interrupt, so that an attendant or reader should not have to walk too far if he needs to get quickly to the other side of a case.

Radial Cases

“In small libraries and branches, supervision is ensured by placing floor-cases as radii of a semi-circle whose centre is the desk.”—Bostwick.[275]

Duff-Brown[276] says that this method of shelving secures oversight and ease of working.

The advantages and disadvantages of this arrangement are well summed up by Eastman,[277] who thinks it of doubtful value.

In small libraries, when set symmetrically in a true semi-circle, radial or concentric cases certainly have a pleasing effect. The building costs more, either in semi-circular or octagonal form, than in rectangular (more in stone or brick than in wood), and there is certainly waste of space in the widening of the wedge-shaped intervals, which, however, can be partially utilized by tables or short intervening floor-cases at their widest part.

This radial shelving has invariably, I believe, been built on the rear of the building. In many lots it has occurred to me that putting it in front, or on one side toward a street, could be made an agreeable feature, and would do more than any other thing could do toward attracting passers-by, and thus “advertising” the library far more effectively than many publicity schemes recently suggested.

As to supervision, I have seen in a recent discussion the reminder that one person blocks the narrow end toward the desk, and effectively hides disorder, mutilation, or theft beyond.

Sometimes the projection from the building is rectangular, and the shelving concentric, an arrangement likely to cast shadows. In some American libraries long rows of slanting floor-cases, not true radii, point toward the desk. So good a librarian as Mr. Wellman of Springfield, has adopted this arrangement in a large rectangular room. See also the Law Library at Rochester, N. Y. But does not this arrangement block light rather than facilitate its penetration into the room to the lowest shelves? I should doubt whether the advantage in supervision would counterbalance this interference and the waste of space. Champneys[278] (an architect) thinks there may be danger of “overestimating police methods.” It seems to me that in sizeable rectangular rooms, supervised entrance and exit at the desk, with rectangular arrangement of the shelves either perpendicular to the deskline or even athwart the room, thus trusting the public, would be better.

In small libraries, as in branches, this arrangement is worth considering, but should not be adopted, it seems to me, without very careful balancing of arguments pro and con. Economy in construction and space and difficulties in enlargement are against; many considerations of cheerfulness and usefulness are in its favor. Where the library is so small, however, that only three or four floor-cases will hold all its stock of books, these in a rectangular projection back of the desk, will give most of the effect of the radial form, rather cheaper.

Librarians who have operated both forms could give points to any one in doubt, and many floor plans, English as well as American, with many interior views, are accessible to show different arrangements.

If adopted, it seems to me that the semi-circular plan with true radii, is better than the octagonal or rectangular walls, with obliquely placed floor cases. These may be arranged for good supervision, but their slant disturbs one’s sense of symmetry. Besides, the basement beneath may be devoted to a class or lecture room, for which such a semi-circular shape gives good light and cheerful effect.

The semi-circular plan has been adopted for alcove rooms in many places, such as the Library of Parliament at Ottawa, Princeton University, and so on, but these do not have radiating cases and need not be discussed here.

Shelf Capacity

To calculate shelf capacity, it has been usual to take ten volumes to a running foot, a figure which has been verified in some libraries. But books vary in thickness in different kinds of literature, and the exigencies of growth require gaps to be left in closely-classified libraries, at the end of each subject. These facts have tended to vary estimates, which do not now agree. In “Library Rooms and Building,” I said,[279] “For these reasons, it is prudent to calculate about eight volumes to a foot for octavos and under, and still less, say five volumes to the foot, for reference books, law books, medical books, and other bulky literature.” I have seen no reason since to change these figures for estimates, though planners should bear in mind the different classes and sizes of books to be stored in each room or on each case.

The English authorities still set the average number of volumes to a linear shelf foot rather higher, eight and a half to nine and a half for lending libraries or fiction shelves. See also, “Stack Capacity.”

The Poole Plan

This seems to be the best place to allude to the scheme which Dr. Poole proposed as an alternative of the stack. As Fletcher says, the principal objection to the stack plan was as to opportunities for readers to get at the books on the shelves. To place readers and books in close contact, Dr. Poole proposed dividing a building mainly into large rooms, in each of which readers should have tables near the windows, while opposite the windows the inner portion of the room should have floor-cases filled with some special class of books. He got the chance to embody this idea in the building of the Newberry Library of Chicago. As far as I know this plan has not been adopted elsewhere as a whole, but every large library since built has included rooms arranged more or less on this plan, which is indeed the idea of the department library in a college; or special rooms, such as Art and Patents, in a public library. So far as Dr. Poole advocated his plan he furthered library efficiency and should deserve credit and remembrance.

“In the Providence Public Library, for instance, two-fifths of the books are shelved outside of the stack.”—Foster.[280]

But the stack plan has “won out” as a system, and has established itself as a factor in modern American library building. Further changes, developments and improvements are doubtless coming, but so far as administration and architecture are concerned, the stack must be reckoned as the distinctive difference between libraries and other buildings.

See description and criticism of the Poole plan, with vindication of the stack system, in B. R. Green’s article in the Library Journal.[281]

Dr. Poole was a sturdy fighter in his day, but he was an excellent, practical librarian. If he had lived to see the stack as now improved, and had also seen its combination with the department library or special library in large buildings, I think he would have conceded the merits of the new system.

Stacks

Generally. These have been adopted in this country, in nearly all libraries which have got beyond the size where floor cases will serve. They come into use with us much earlier in the growth of a library than in England, where they seem not so much in favor.

The notion of the stack was first suggested by the modern revival in America, about 1850, of the floor-case system, exemplified two hundred years before in the Leyden University Library. The first modern mention of this system I can find is Winsor’s description (1876)[282] of the arrangement of his new Roxbury branch of the Boston Public Library. In his description of the floor-cases, then only floor-cases, he suggested the idea of providing for growth another story of superincumbent cases, apparently of wood, with “dumb-waiters,” and “spiral stairs.” In 1877, Winsor outlined plans for a similar shelving of several stories with iron framework and iron floors.[283] About this time (Winsor left the Boston Public Library and went to Harvard as librarian in 1877), the first metallic stack (with wooden shelves) was developed and installed in the addition to the Harvard library building. The idea seems due to Winsor, the practical embodiment of it in full stack form to the architects Ware and Van Brunt. The latter described it soon after in the Library Journal,[284] saying, “I am in part responsible for it.”

This pregnant idea, which, as developed, has done more to change library administration and library architecture than any other device, was evidently born in the brains of a librarian as a result of his thought and experiments, and developed into practicability by good architects, as all great problems of library building should be worked out. The original stack contained all essential ideas, but great improvements in details have since then been effected by librarians, architects, and constructors.

Stacks were at first stoutly opposed by many librarians. As described by Fletcher,[285] “The stack, as usually built, consists of a series of iron bookcases [floor cases] running from bottom to top of a high room divided at intervals of about seven feet [7½] by light [iron] openwork or glass floors [decks]. The stack undoubtedly offers the most compact storage of books with great ease of access to every part.” He then enumerates the objections to the stack, the principal of which he thinks is, “little or no provision can be made for the access of readers to the shelves, the idea of the stack being that of a place to keep the books when not in use.”

Since the first stack was installed at Harvard, remarkably serviceable even then as a new idea, some of our most inventive genius has been constantly at work in trying to perfect the advantages of the system, and overcome its acknowledged defects. Construction, ventilation, heating, lighting, communications, ease of operation, have been gradually improved, and recently Dr. Poole’s and Mr. Fletcher’s principal objection, difficulty of use by readers, has been so greatly overcome that a later chapter has been devoted to this subject. There are several good patent stacks in the market, which deserve study and a chance to submit bids in every new building project, large or small.

The best method of planning is for the librarian to calculate how many volumes he will have to provide for, and how large a stack he needs (floor area, and number of “decks”); to lay out, with the assistance of the architect, a floor plan for one story, with the number and width of gangways he wants, and a specification of stairways, lifts, folio-shelving, and other peculiarities.

It is better not to wait for working drawings and specifications for main building, or even for the stack shell (or building), but to ask for two bids for a stack of size described, one for the cheapest form and material each maker can supply, and another for the best form he would recommend, with his cheapest price for that. This alternative is suggested, because each make claims certain advantages over the other, which might overbalance a difference in price. The invitation to bid should reserve the right “to reject any bid for cause,” and the final decision should be reserved for the building committee, under recommendation of librarian and architect. The considerations for determination can be: cost, strength, lightness, compactness, adjustability, cleanliness (including lack of projections to catch dust); convenience of stairs, lifts, floors; details of heating and lighting; and pleasing design.

After the bid has been assigned, and before the makers have begun on construction, I advise calling their expert into consultation, and asking him if he can suggest any change or improvement in any point which will increase the usefulness of the stack, without increasing its cost. There is such a keen competition between stack builders, that any of them would welcome such a conference, in the hope of getting ideas from librarian or architect which might help him improve his patent.

The stack thus bid for is to be self-supporting, deriving its solidity from its own uprights, without depending in any degree on the shell, with which the architect will only cover it and protect it from the weather.

Location. A stack may be installed inside the building; for instance, all along the rear,[286] or side or front. A small stack is often a feature of a large department room. But generally it occupies an ell or wing of the building, of light construction, projecting from the rear, or from one side.

Where the building must face a noisy street there seems to be no reason why the stack, rather than reading rooms, should not be located there. Why could it not be designed, even if “true stack windows” would make it look like an organ front, as a distinctive architectural feature?

“The stack may be as refreshing a problem for the hard-witted architect to struggle with as he is liable to meet. It may be that the reading rooms will be within, shut off from every noise, and the stack arranged along the exterior.”—Russell Sturgis.[287]

The reading room is now often put just over the stack, as a top-story, separated from it by a solid floor, but connected with it by service tubes, telephones and lifts. But in colleges, is it not better to use such a location for seminar rooms, and in many libraries could it not be used as part of an exhibition and special library or special study floor?

The Stack Shell. That is to say, the addition in which the stack is housed. As has been said, it usually projects from the rear (but sometimes from the side) of the main building, as an ell or wing. It can be of lighter, simpler and plainer construction than the rest, for it needs no other strength than is necessary to support its own walls and roof. Indeed, it has not yet been the victim of architectural ostentation. On the exterior, true stack windows usually run up and down the whole height, although they may be interrupted by cross sections at the level of the floors or decks, or rather just above them.

From recent experiments I have made in a stack, I am led to think that here, as elsewhere, top light from windows is ten times more valuable for penetration than bottom light, hence such a cross-section of wall, about a foot wide, if it has any binding power, strengthens the wall, gives space inside for heating pipes, or looks better, would not abstract any illumination from the interior. Perhaps, however, the piers do not need such binding. That is a question for the architect, and depends largely on their construction. If they are re-enforced by iron or steel T-beams, the piers need not be massive or be strengthened otherwise.

Some authorities (Champneys,[288] for instance) recommend solid floors every three decks, as guard against spread of fire, but this extra expense, not needed for support, seems to me unnecessary as protection.

The material of stacks must be iron, or better, steel, to support so much weight. The construction, indeed, is much like that of a “sky scraper,” whose steel frame stands alone, without help from the walls.

Use by Readers. It does not seem either possible or desirable to plan for continuous use of any space in stacks by readers. The temperature both in summer and winter is usually not so equable as in other rooms. The main object of the stack, which is book storage, is just so much frustrated by surrender of shelf space to readers. But there is much inconvenience in excluding them entirely.

It is a hindrance to investigation to have to make inquiries, or selections, through the medium of an application at a desk. A large number of serious readers want to glance at all the books bearing on the point they are investigating, often to “taste” books by dipping into them here and there; and to make choice directly from the shelves, of books they want to examine more thoroughly or copy from, to be carried to a public or private reading room and used there undisturbed at leisure. They want free access to the stack for ten minutes only at a time, but they want it badly. See Fletcher.[289]

“It is fortunate for those who have the use of a library if they can be admitted to the shelves and select their books by actual examination.”—Cutter.[290]

For this, several devices have been used. One is to leave the space in stacks next to windows for tables and chairs, to be used by readers. “Or alcoves on one side, as in Iowa College.”—(Marvin.[291]) A variation of this takes the form of “cubicles,” little glassed-in rooms next the windows, as in the new Harvard Law School stack, or as proposed for the Harvard University Library. But before using this form generally, it would be better to calculate, first, how much space this will abstract from the storage capacity of the stack; second, how much it affects the penetration of daylight into the stack; third, how often any one reader will want to use any one section of the library so long as to make this arrangement worth while; fifth, the expense of construction and provision of equivalent stack room elsewhere; and sixth, the problems of heating and ventilation, for readers who require reading-room conditions.

Another favorite device is to shorten the outer ends of ranges of shelves, say by one three-foot section, in every other case on every floor, where a tiny desk can be set into the range, with a chair or stool underneath for the use of a reader. This furnishes room for reading but pro tanto less space for books.

Open Access Stacks. Can wider aisles be left in stacks so that readers may stand well back or stoop to inspect books, and pass each other easily? Yes, stack cases five feet “on centres” will allow fairly free movement, as this means 3-feet-6-inch or even 3-feet-8-inch aisles. But no such width could well be allowed as is called for with open-access floor cases, i.e., six feet clear between. The present methods of stack construction would not apparently lend themselves well to wide spaces on the ground floor and narrow spaces above, because the uprights would not directly support each other. A building might have, indeed, two or more different stacks, one open access for readers, the other close storage for books, but this seems rather wasteful. Is there no way to provide, in a stack which will give the maximum storage, some facility for such inspection and handling as is needed both for staff and readers?

A Suggestion. In reading “Clark’s Use of Books,” I came across an old expedient of mediæval days which will give a good name for the device I had already thought of. (See next section.) His quotation[292] is as follows:—

“In the north Syde, the Cloister was all fynely glazed. And in every wyndowe iii Pewes or Carrels, where every one of the old Monks had his carrell, severall by himselfe, and there studied upon there books. From one stanchell of a window to another, and in every one was a deske to lye their bookes on.” “These were devices to provide a certain amount of privacy for literary work.”[293]

Carrels. While thinking of this conflict between the desired use by readers and the close storage which is the proper use of a stack, I tried to find some wasted space which might serve the one use without infringing upon the other. While searching I noticed that window ledges were thus wasted. Look through Koch’s floor plans,[294] or any others, and you will notice that window frames, usually set midway between the outer and inner surfaces of the wall, were sometimes set flush with the inner surface, thus leaving outside a window “stool” nearly the full width of the wall. But why leave it outside where it would be only useful for pigeon-roosts or flower-boxes, neither strictly necessary? Why not set the window-frame flush with the outer wall and so leave the whole ledge inside, both sill and stool? In the Salem Public Library stack, as the architect saw no structural reason against it, this has been tried. In each stack window on every floor a thin shelf has been run across, table high. The setting back allows this shelf to be twelve inches deep and three feet long without projecting into the aisle, and without materially interfering with light. Set a stool near and here is provision, close to the books, and without cutting into the stack, for just as many choosers of books as there are windows on each floor. When no readers need them, here is a ledge for attendants to use in assembling or dispersing books.

This device does not suit permanent reading, for which the stack is not intended,—but why does it not perfectly meet the needs of casual inspection, and choice?

It has been gradually tried out. In the John Hay Memorial Library at Brown, rather narrow window-shelves were tried; then wider sloping desks at the Episcopal Theological School; and recently, the wider Salem carrels, where the windows are set quite flush with the exterior of the piers.

There is still an opportunity for experiment and development. Is such a shelf better, fixed or hinged? What would be the simplest form of hinging and fastening? Is it better, in view of its temporary and intermittent use, to have it at desk height, for a standee? How thin can it be, and of what wood, cheapest and least liable to splitting? Might not metal shelves, furnished with the stack, be better, and about as cheap?

As finally improved with these carrels we could bring the whole stack back to the narrowest intervals consistent with moving books, and thus avoid resort to underground stacks and sliding cases, until much later.

[Webster’s International Dictionary gives only the spelling “carol,” but the old records call it “carrell.”]

At Durham, the carrels were 2 feet 9 inches wide. At Gloucester there were twenty carrels, each 4 feet wide, 6 feet 9 inches high, and 19 inches deep.[295]

The modern Salem Public Library carrel is wider than the one at Durham, and about as high and deep as those at Gloucester Cathedral.

Stack Details. Dark Interiors are discussed elsewhere; having the library built around a stack, to be lighted by electricity, open to daylight only by way of the roof, and opening to outer corridors or rooms on each floor. This is mainly an architectural problem, though its administrative aspects would have to be considered by the librarian.

Height. The height of each stack floor is generally set at seven feet to seven and a half. I favor seven and a half, of the two, so that a tall man need not stoop under the deck beams and electric bulbs. In order to get the ground floor of building and stack coterminous, the lower story of the stack must correspond with that of the building, which is not usually higher than ten feet. As it is most convenient to have the basement floors of stack and building also coterminous, the unusual height, for this case only, may be accepted, and the inconveniently high shelves used for some kind of slow or dead books.

It is usual to leave several feet above the top shelves, just under the roof, for ventilation.

“Broken” floors are used in some libraries, the Massachusetts State Library, for instance; one stack floor being three and one-half feet higher and the next one three and one-half feet lower than the corresponding building floor, on the idea that it is easier to go up or down half a flight than a whole flight, for anyone wanting to get books. But isn’t the average the same? In this form, the very great convenience of moving books by trucks is sacrificed, so that the almost universal custom is to have the ground floor, and every second floor above, level in the stack with floors in the building, thus fixing the height of the latter at fourteen or fifteen feet, except the top floor, which is free, and the basement, usually determined by other exigencies.

The material used for “decks” may be openwork iron, marble, or more usually translucent ground glass.

The floor of the stack as well as of the building basement, is generally cemented, with special provisions for excluding dampness.

Passages. Those running lengthwise may be called gangways, those across between cases, aisles. The number of gangways varies with the size and use of the stack. Although it might be built without a center gangway, and have one on each side, or only on one side—it would then be a very narrow stack—the usual construction is to have a gangway about four feet wide down the center, and one of less width (just enough to allow passing around, say two feet,) at each outer end. But if it is desired to have very close packing, these side gangways may not be necessary. In building the new Salem stack, Mr. Jones decided that he could so run the classification of the books from the center around back to the center, in every aisle, that there would be little need of passing around the outer ends, and he could omit them and so gain that much more for books.

The center gangway may be any width desired, but should of course be wide enough to serve as thoroughfare for men, book-trucks, and boxes. Although four feet seems the average width, it varies from three feet to six feet in existing libraries. Good, large windows on each floor should light gangways at the far end.

The length of aisles varies with the width of the stack building, though limited by the belief that no bookcase should be more than 15 or 18 feet long, which requires other gangways at that interval. The width of the aisles has varied. The original Harvard width, 2 feet 4 inches, appears to be the very narrowest which will allow passage of two persons, or stooping to the lower shelves; 2 feet 8 inches is very common; 3 feet is so roomy that the stack becomes convenient for limited open-access; while 5 feet “on centers” (3′ 6″ or 8″ aisle) is the maximum in stacks at present.

Many stacks have wide intervals at the sides of the “deck” in each aisle—so wide as to have to be wired to prevent books falling through—“for ventilation, diffusion of light, and communication,” but such wide spaces are not needed for light or ventilation, and are much handier for dropping pencils than for passing books, so that I prefer wider decks with small rims for protection, and much narrower spaces along the cases.

Stairs. Stack stairs need not be wide, for they are so short that two people never need to pass. Two feet wide is enough. When first adopted, circular stairs were used, as supposed to occupy less space, but they were found to be inconvenient and dangerous, and since measurement has shown that straight stairs need occupy no more space, the “cork screws” have been entirely superseded. Eight-inch risers and 9-inch treads are recommended by Champneys,[296] who thinks, by the way, 2 feet 4 inches the right width, iron with rubber treads being the material.

Stairs should be put in wherever they will be most convenient, and where they interfere least with book storage and passing. One flight certainly should be next the entrance on each floor, and one flight generally at the other end. If they be set sideways in the folio shelving there, which is not always all needed, they seem to interfere least. (See paragraph on circular or winding stairs.)

Lifts. Light lifts for single books, or few books at a time, are needed for all stacks (See that title, on [page 228].) In large libraries and high stacks, elevators large and strong enough to carry trucks and boxes, are also necessary. For lifts, hand operation will serve, or electricity; for freight elevators, some sort of power is better.

Every such carrier should run from basement to top, with opening on every floor. A speaking tube should run beside it, with mouthpiece also on each floor.

Ledges. (See under Shelving, [p. 265].) As a ledge on both sides of each case would greatly narrow the aisles for passage and diminish the capacity for storage, these have disappeared from the modern stack. Their place has been taken in some stacks by sliding shelves (to be drawn out when wanted), which do not appear to be entirely satisfactory. But the need for some substitute, for the use of which Dewey speaks, has suggested ledges for folio shelving on each floor and for the new device of carrels, which may at least partially replace ledges without diminishing storage capacity or easy passage.

Shelves. The shelving of stacks follows the rules already described under the title “Shelving,” except as dimensions are varied by the use of steel, which is less bulky. Movable shelves also allow more variety in intervals to suit the average size of books in any part of the stack. It is usual to maintain the 10-inch height for intervals between shelves, all over the stack, except as thus modified here and there to suit exigencies and except for folio shelving at the ends (or sides) of each floor.

Different patents offer much choice in stack shelving. Avoid especially projections, likely to catch dust or tear clothing or injure books. Test very carefully all forms of “clutch” or detachable shelves.

Stack Lighting. Natural. North light is the best, but the choice is not often open. The location of the stack is determined usually by other considerations than aspect. Unless it runs along the rear or side of the main building; if it projects, that is, it will naturally have two sides lighted, one of which in any location would have to be south or west, and thus sunny. If wired glass is used as a protection against fire it will be more or less opaque and thus will temper glare. Shades can, of course, be used on the worst exposure, and some contrivance can be used, like that at the Library of Congress, to work all these curtains at once to save time.

Overhead light will penetrate one glass floor of a stack fairly well, not more.[297]

“If daylight is on the whole better and more wholesome, as it is certainly cheaper than electric light, then a well windowed stack room is better than a dark one.”—Russell Sturgis.[298]

Light penetrates stack aisles effectively only about twenty feet, hence a stack lighted on both sides may be forty feet wide, plus width of centre aisle.

Artificial. The best light is, of course, electricity, and here the expert of the stack to be installed can give valuable advice. The question of the location of the bulbs, their power, their direction (transverse or perpendicular), their frequency, their wiring, their switches, such questions must be determined. As a great deal might depend on the particular structure of the stack, one bid for the stack, another for the lighting, with specifications from each bidder, might be invited.

Hand bulbs at the end of cords have not been found satisfactory. Various devices have been used, but good systems of fixed lights (bulbs with reflectors and shades), worked well by means of switches, have been perfected.

Reflective Colors. To help diffusion and local effectiveness of both natural and artificial light, inner walls and the whole stack would well be painted some agreeable light tint of enamelled paint. This is a question of taste for the architect, with approval by librarian and committee.

Stack Windows

As stack windows must be high and narrow, they introduce a new and imperative architectural feature on the exterior of the stack fronts. The usual form is a continuous window from foundation to eaves. This may, however, be broken for a foot up from every floor, by a cross band of iron or stone, for effect or for any interior convenience, like continuous hanging of steam pipes, without real diminution of daylight inside, provided that the windows run quite to the ceiling in each deck, to give full top light. If the windows are glazed with wire glass, they will afford some protection from outside fire, and being opaque, would temper the glare of sunlight. Factory ribbed glass is also used, as both tempering and intensifying daylight.

True Windows. To give full effect the piers between windows should be only as thick as the depth of the double book cases, sixteen inches, and directly opposite them. They have only to support themselves and the roof, as the stack floors are independent and self-supporting. Re-enforcement with a steel T-beam will render them stiff enough with sixteen inch width, and even allow flaring from the windows to admit more light.

With this construction, each window can have the full width of the aisle it fronts and be so framed and glazed as not to intercept any light, thus throwing illumination as far as possible down the aisle, with oblique rays from the side of the window to the other side of the aisle, reaching both rows of books to the far end.

This I call a true stack window. In looking over modern plans, you will see that many libraries have them as to position, though the entire available width is not always used.

If you have Clark’s “Care of Books,” see how true the alcove windows were in the Queen’s College, Cambridge, library as long ago as A. D. 1472.

Defective Windows. In other stacks, you will find windows too short (even if there is a cross band, it should not be more at the most than eighteen inches in height, leaving a window on each deck, six feet full down from the deck above), but oftener windows narrower than the aisle, giving too little light to reach the inner ends of the cases. There is no excuse for these. As has been said above, there is no structural need to build the piers between windows wider than the book cases inside, and just so much as they encroach upon the windows they commit the unpardonable sin of darkening the stack.

Many modern plans show this defect.

False Windows. By these I mean windows which outside take the gridiron stack form, but do not come truly and fully opposite every aisle inside.

“The rear elevation of the New York Public Library plainly shows that the architects wilfully omitted to place a window at the end of each aisle. All the beauty of the elevation will not make good the want of light in the lower floors of the stack.”—Oscar Bluemner.[299]

The falsity of this arrangement, which is found in many modern libraries, lies in using an exterior scheme which does not meet inside conditions. The excuse is that sufficient diffused light is provided for the whole stack. But if this is true (which I cannot concede), any other equal window area could be used in any other form, which would not give outer promise of inward excellence. They are only a sham, and can therefore be called false stack windows.

Heating. The best form developed for stacks is by hot water or steam pipes along the walls just above the floor of each story clear of the books, with coils in the windows. Overhead pipes are very bad, as they concentrate heat at the top of each story, where it is most oppressive to those walking or working below.

Ventilation. There should be an air space above the top shelves in a stack. Good ventilation can be provided there by end windows and through the side windows. Some writers have advised sealed windows so as to be dust proof. In that case some system of forced draft would have to be installed.

The ventilation of a stack, where use by staff and public is only intermittent, is perhaps not so important as that of reading rooms constantly crowded, but the open construction and height of the stack differentiate the problem rather than avoid it.

Underground. In England, Burgoyne says[300] four stories is the rule. But in America, every library builds its stack, in all dimensions, according to its wants and space. Four-story stacks are common, but by no means the limit.

The impending exigencies of storage have not only brought suggestions of dark stacks in the interior of a building, but they have already carried stacks under ground. Even the Bodleian Library in England has installed a two-story subterranean stack, mechanically lighted and ventilated, under its front lawn. Plans are on foot for stacks many floors below ground-level, to be lighted and aired by electricity. See [p. 222].

Upward. Ten “decks” is the maximum height now, but why is it not possible to build further up into the air before we burrow under ground? Are there any structural difficulties? Would it cost more to have a “sky-scraper” stack than a dungeon?

It is a question how underground cases will affect the books. It is claimed that forced draft will avert the evils of dampness, but Dr. Thwaites reports that he has found trouble from mould deposited on the backs of books as the warmer air from the surface above comes into contact with the cooler walls of the cellar. Would not books packed in sliding cases, away from the moving air, be more apt to develop inside rot and insects?

It does not appear to me that cellars for book storage have got beyond experimental stage. Some years of test seem needed to prove their perfect availability.

Stack Towers. B. R. Green says[301] “the stack might be in the center, and rise from the roof as a tower. It would be a simple thing to make a stack of twenty or more stories.” Why not? and why not so rise from an ell, as well as from the center? Why not build it as a sky-scraper, any number of stories upward, supporting itself, with a shell plastered on the exterior? The structural objections would seem no greater in a stack than an office building. The operating objections are surely no weightier going up than going down. The daylight would be better, the dampness less. It might be easier to flood cellars than towers, in case of fire, but the certainty of water is even a worse foe to books than the possibilities of fire.

Why is not here a chance to develop a new type of architectural beauty? If towers are fine features in churches and abbeys, why not in libraries? Before digging catacombs for our books, why not set our inventive faculties on hanging gardens of literature reached by elevators like the levels of the Eiffel Tower?

Capacity. Various ways of calculating capacity have been suggested, but most of them disregard the fact that stacks vary in measurement, and only two whose interior dimensions are exactly alike can be safely compared.

Capacity of an average stack can be roughly calculated at twenty volumes to a square foot on each deck. Thus a 30 × 40 stack, three stories high, will hold about 72,000 vols.

I prefer to calculate the capacity of every new stack independently, when planning it.

Taking folio shelving separately and adding its figures in later, I take one floor by itself. It has so many double cases, such and such length, on each side of the central gangway. One case 15 or 18 feet long, multiplied by 2 for the two sides, and 7 or 8 for such shelves as the librarian thinks he can use, then multiplied by 8 volumes to each foot, will give the “practical capacity” in volumes for octavos and duodecimos. Multiply by the number of cases on both sides, plus your calculation for folios, and you have the capacity of that deck. Multiply again by number of decks, and you have the practical capacity of the stack.

If you wish to get the “full capacity,” as it is reported in many plans, make your volume-multiplier ten instead of eight, or add twenty-five per cent to your first calculation, which amounts to the same thing. But eight to the foot is practically full capacity for closely classified libraries, where frequent gaps must be left for growth, at the end of each subject.

Sliding Cases

We can wisely borrow from England the “sliding presses” which Dr. Richard Garnett brought to the attention of the Library Association of the United Kingdom at its annual meeting of 1891, having previously described them in Dewey’s Library Notes and elsewhere in 1887.

Adapted from the Bethnal Green library in 1886, they were put on trial in the British Museum in 1887, and have since been in operation, regarded apparently as an invention quite as valuable as the stack appears to us. “I think enough has been said,” to quote Dr. Garnett’s words, “to convince librarians of the expediency of taking the sliding-press, or some analogous contrivance, into account in plans for the enlargement of old libraries, or the construction of new ones.”

The British Museum press is described as “an additional bookcase hung in the air from beams or rods projecting in front of the bookcase it is desired to enlarge, working by rollers running on metal ribs, and so suspended as not to touch the ground anywhere.” In other words, it is a movable bookcase parallel to a fixed case, and sliding to and from it by wheels above. It may be distinctively called a hanging case or press. It is better suited to the arrangement of aisles and construction of floors in the British Museum than to most American libraries, and so far as I know has not been copied here.

[See illustration in Library Notes,[302] and also in Burgoyne.[303]]

Another double press used at the Museum is called by Dr. Garnett the pivot press. It is apparently a second case, kept front to front close to the fixed case and swung out from it when wanted, by a door-motion hinged on a perpendicular pivot; overhung, I gather, at the Museum, but elsewhere running by wheels on metal semi-circular tracks laid on or in the floor. Such were early experiments in Trinity College, Dublin, twenty-five years ago. These might be called folding bookcases. They have not yet been copied in America.

A third kind of movable bookcase, which may more properly be called the sliding case, is used in the Patent Office Library, London. This apparently also swings from the top. Duff-Brown[304] describes it: “These presses are swung closely side by side, and drawn out, one at a time, as required.” He does not say drawn out endwise, however.

This idea is developed in The Librarian[305] by James Lymburn, who suggests “a store-room of any length, 22 feet wide by 35 feet high, in three stories, lighted from the roof through iron grating floors; with center passages of 9 feet, and sliding cases 6 feet long, closely packed in on each side.” He calculates that such a room 40 feet long would hold 100,000 volumes; its advantages being close storage and shelter from dust and sunlight.

See for illustration, Champneys.[306]

Jenner, in the Library Chronicle,[307] claims for the sliding case these merits: Cheapness, as compared with enlarging the building; possibility of gradual installation as needed; nearness to other shelves in a classification; absence of obstacle to light(?) or motion.

I have also received from a dealer in Oxford, England, a small pamphlet hinting at rather than describing, a room laid out after Lymburn’s idea. The pamphlet calculates it will save about half the space taken by stack storage. These cases, and Mr. Lymburn’s, are evidently double.

See also H. Woodbine in The Library Association Record.[308]

Per contra, H. M. Mayhew says in The Library,[309] “The drawback of the ordinary sliding or hanging or extension case is the difficulty of moving so great a weight whenever one book is wanted.”

I cannot figure out much from these English descriptions about problems of mechanism, repairs, lighting, or cleaning.

In America, the general idea of sliding cases has been discussed since Dr. Garnett’s description of the British Museum device in Library Notes, and since Mr. Gladstone called attention to it in the Nineteenth Century of March, 1890.

Mr. Gladstone describes what he calls these “book cemeteries” thus, as he has seen the “tentative and initial processes”:—

“The masses represented by filled bookcases are set one in front of the other, and in order that access may be had as required, they are set on trams inserted in the floor (which must be a strong one), and wheeled off and on as occasion requires.”

The masses which he thinks ought first “be selected for interment” are Hansard’s Debates, the Gentleman’s Magazine, and the Annual Register.

So far as I know only two trials of this idea have been made here; several years ago by Dr. Little at Bowdoin College, more recently by Mr. Lane at Harvard University. Both of these are wooden single cases, side by side, pulled out by the end, and locked or lockable. Both slide, not hang.

Mr. Lane has now a line of twenty-three in a row, sliding on ball-bearing wheels at the bottom, which in turn run on rails countersunk in the floor. At the top, the cases are held erect and guided, but not supported, by small wheels along the sides of a T-rail. He uses his cases entirely for rare books in an exhibition room on the ground floor, and finds them very satisfactory for the purpose, although he utters a warning that provision should be made for free access to all the mechanism, which occasionally needs repair.

Dr. Little submitted a paper describing his cases to the A. L. Institute at its New York meeting in 1911. By reference to a photographic view accompanying I see that he has a double-decker,—two stories of five single wooden cases each; each case “about six feet high and three feet long.” “These cases can be made of either wood or metal, for either octavos or quartos, supplied with either fixed or movable shelves.” [At Harvard the middle shelf is fixed as a brace, the others are movable.] “They must be mounted at the center of the base on small ball-bearing trucks which run on metal rails sunk in the floor. Their tops are at the same time guided and kept securely in place by a slot and a T-iron, the friction against which is reduced to a minimum by rollers, placed horizontally. If properly constructed and placed upon level rails, a slight pull with one hand will bring one forth. The increased storage is estimated at 100 per cent.... We also have the Patent Office Gazette on six wooden sliding cases like these, on either side of the door of the room in which they are stored.... This method of storage is especially economical in case a depository library desires to keep its sheep-bound set of Congressional Documents as a unit, arranged by their serial number.... The cost of these cases and their installation varies greatly with the material, finish and location. My first cost less than $15 each, my last about twice that amount.”

I suppose Dr. Little means this for the cost of each separate bookcase, fully equipped and mounted. Mr. Lane’s figures I have not been able to put my hands on.

So far for the statement of facts. I must confess to having approached the subject with some prejudice against the mechanism of these cases, founded on an experience of sliding doors in dwelling houses, which slide or not, as they feel like it, and whose machinery is most difficult to get at and repair. But machinery can be got under control by mechanics. I yield my prejudices in view of the evident advantages of this system, and am prepared to make definite suggestions as to its use in future repairs or building in this country.

In alterations of those architectural extravagances which have wasted so much perpendicular capacity in high rooms and corridors, I see a way to use the style of cases experimented on by Dr. Little and Mr. Lane, rather than any of the English styles. Either as a single story along a wall anywhere, or in the double story style, swung out anywhere on the vacant floor of any room or any unnecessarily wide corridor, there will be relief in the storage of any books not required for open access or frequent reference;—as Dr. Little says, “for compact storage of less used books.”

In planning new buildings I hardly think it would be necessary to set up such cases at first, except perhaps in the case of rare books as at Harvard, where locked cases and protection from sunlight were wanted, with infrequent access; or in equipping rooms for rapidly growing sets, such as Congressional or State Documents, Patent Office Reports, sets of periodicals or publications of societies, or any similar sets whose titles and volume numbers can be labelled on the ends of the cases; or for “dead” books. The Oxford pamphlet sketches a room somewhat after the “Poole plan,” equipped with tables and chairs toward the windows and a row of sliding cases along the blind wall opposite the window light. This seems to me good for many departments.

But except in rooms evidently adapted to such treatment, I would not install sliding shelves anywhere, but would most certainly leave space, in a perfectly dry basement if nowhere else, for possible future installation whenever need may arise.

One reason for this postponement is this: that several details must be studied, experimented on, and perfected before fully equipped rooms of this kind can be considered as tried out and permanently satisfactory. Lymburn’s scheme seems good, but the plans presented by Champneys and the dealers do not work out well on examination as regards space, light or handling. I suggest as problems to be investigated,—

• Smooth and sure working of the mechanism.
• Easy access to top and rear for repairs.
• Access for cleaning and ventilation.
• Incidence of weight (this is not even on floors as in a stack; but is moving, as on bridges).
• Lighting (most important) on each face of each case.
• Floors sure to remain true.
• Width of center aisles for all emergencies.

See Bookworms, [p. 222].

PART III
READERS’ ROOMS

Reading Generally

F. B. Perkins[310] divides reading into three classes: Entertainment, Acquisition of knowledge, Authorship. This epitomizes our American division of reading rooms.

What I shall call the light-reading room will provide for all who drop in at a library to pass a quiet, restful, recreative half hour, a very large proportion of readers. They are attracted by the lighter magazines, the illustrated weeklies and monthlies, and books into which they can dip pleasantly for a few moments. This is generally known as the periodical room.

The serious reading room, usually called the reading room, is intended for such readers as get books from the shelves to study or read earnestly and long, or are preparing themes, papers, newspaper articles—even (when there is slender provision of separate study rooms) where they are writing books.

I would add a fourth use of a library—perhaps the commonest—as it helps all other classes, that is, what we call reference use. (In England where the reference library and its reading room seem to cover all reading of books in the library as distinguished from magazines and newspapers, this is called quick or ready reference.) A separate reference room or separate corner of the reading room near the door holds all the books to which visitors look for scraps of information, but never read consecutively.

Serious Reading Room

By this phrase I mean the room for serious readers who want quiet, but do not need separate rooms. The English seem to call this the reference room, a name I apply only to their “quick” or “ready reference” room. Their “reading room” I call in this work periodical room, in which books for light or “half hour” reading in the library may be shelved.

This main or general reading room is usually on the ground floor in smaller libraries, but may be relegated to the second or the top, or indeed to any other convenient floor, accessible by elevators and in good communication with the stack.

In libraries where there is space for it on the ground floor, it can be supervised and served from the central delivery desk, but when elsewhere, it must have a separate desk and service.

In the largest libraries it often occupies a central position and a circular form. With a lofty open dome above, it is an impressive feature, but wastes space which might be utilized otherwise, and it is said to be more or less drafty and hard to heat evenly.

Position at the top as at the New York Public Library, has great advantage in light without waste of space, or superfluous loftiness. If over the stack (though the supporting walls have then to be stronger than usual) it has the advantage of short and straight lines to the books, and is said to lend itself to enlargement for readers and books pari passu. Good elevator service is a requisite in this form. “I incline more and more to the reading room on top of the building, especially in a large city.”—(Dewey.[311]) So Andrews, at the same Conference. He also said, “I believe in the single reading room [as compared with the Newberry or Poole’s plan] in a public library as a saving in trained assistants, and because it is impossible to classify readers in rooms as you do books.”

“Plain outlines are best. Recesses, alcoves, bay windows and nooks are difficult of supervision and spoil the public character of a library.”—O. Bluemner.[312]

The main requisites of a reading room are quiet, privacy, light, good air and space.

Quiet. This means not only regulations against conversation, but various physical conditions. For instance, absence of stir or motion; exclusion of such magazines as are merely looked over with fluttering of leaves; exclusion from the shelves (if there must be shelves around the walls) of books frequently wanted by readers and attendants; (reference books, class books, new books and others inviting frequent examination, should be put on the side or in a corner near the entrance, concentrating stir there;) noiseless floors; echoless walls and ceilings; exclusion of outside noises; no stairs directly into or out of the room; no passage through to other rooms.

Privacy. This requirement can be met by the proper provision and arrangement of the furniture, which will be further treated under the head of Tables. The former method was to use almost exclusively large open tables, seating ten or more, or tables with lengthwise and crosswise partitions, setting aside bins or stalls like voting booths to shut out distracting sights. The large plain tables are not now in favor, the tendency being toward tables for six, four, two, or even one. See floor plans and interiors of libraries in Koch and elsewhere.

Light. Light falling from the left, shaded from the eyes, focussed on the table in front of the reader on the book he is reading there, or the paper on which he is writing, is desirable. If the room is lofty, windows high in the walls, carefully shaded from glare, are out of range of reader’s eyes. If lower, as most rooms are, the table seats should be so disposed if possible as to give each reader light from the left.

The question of artificial light is discussed elsewhere. The best of high lamps for diffused light, of side lights and of hanging lamps to light readers, is a special study for the architect. As readers have varied eyesight, individual table lights, adjustable and severally operated are best on the whole, but the wiring of each table fixes its location so that it cannot be moved in cleaning or re-spacing. Bulbs hanging about eight feet from the floor are much used.

Good Air. This is as important as it often is unsatisfactory. Bad air interferes more than anything else with clearness and concentration of thought. Mr. Ranck of Grand Rapids is now chairman of an A. L. A. Committee on this subject. He writes me: “Personally, the more I have looked into it, the more I am convinced that the physiological side is most difficult, not the mere keeping down the amount of carbon dioxide. I am inclined to think it will be necessary to make a number of experimental tests to determine these points.” The report of this committee will be interesting.

Meanwhile, the best thing to do is to get a report from recent buildings as to their methods, and the success of each. Evidently the problem varies with the size and situation of the room and the method of heating, including heat from artificial light.

If perfect ventilation could be installed, crowded tables would not be quite so bad.

Space. H. T. Hare, an architect, in a recent number of the Library Association Record,[313] writes: “Almost all our public libraries are too closely packed for comfort, health and movement. A fifty per cent increase in floor space would not be at all extravagant.”

If there is money to spare, this might be desirable, but unfortunately few libraries, large or small, have funds enough to allow luxuries. The spacing of seats must be as close as health and convenience will permit. It is generally agreed that for serious reading, which may require room to spread books open and to lay manuscripts beside them, 25 square feet are ample, 20 square feet sufficient, 16 square feet rather a crowded minimum, to include chair, table and passage-ways.

As to size, Duff-Brown[314] suggests finding the daily average of readers and plan for one quarter of this daily attendance at any one time during the day, as sufficient space to allow.

Reference Room

As already said this is a very useful room, or section of a room; indeed it might even be put in an anteroom or vestibule, to include such books as will be used for quick consultation, but never for reading. It should be for the openest and speediest access. As Spofford specifies,[315] “It would include encyclopædias, dictionaries, glossaries, etc.,” or according to Fletcher,[316] “general and special encyclopædias (such as music, fine arts, mechanics, geography, classical, Biblical, biographical, etc.)” Dr. E. C. Richardson[317] lays down that “at least a small selection of the best reference books should be accessible to the public.”

“Place as little hindrance as may be to the busy man who runs in to glance at the dictionary, directory, or time-table.”—Bostwick.[318]

This room need not be as large as either of the other reading rooms, but it should be most accessible, near the front door, near the desk, near the catalog. It should have wall shelving for large and small books, drawn under specifications by the librarian, for just what volumes he wants to display there. Revolving bookcases are convenient here. This is especially the place for the old-fashioned ledge, and for a few narrow tables like those used in front of a catalog case, with small, light chairs or stools; just as little furniture as would be needed for taking down a volume at a time to glance at, or to take brief notes from. How many it should accommodate at once depends on the library and its use. It will be wanted, in brief visits, by very many of the visitors, down even to the children of the higher grades of the schools.

Although one of the most important departments of large or small libraries, it is not the place for high walls or architectural ornament. It should have especially good light at all points day and evening, for the type of many reference books is so small as to try the eyesight at its best.

If there is not space in the building for a separate room, put it, if possible, in the same room with open-access shelves, or the magazines, or in a corridor, where there is already some confusion; for the use of reference books is a distraction to serious reading anywhere near. If they must be put in the reading room, give the reference books a stretch of shelving or a corner near the entrance and desk, so that their consultation will leave serious readers afar off and undisturbed.

Might not a good arrangement of a reference room be on the window side of the delivery or open-access room, with broad alcoves opposite the light, and with a good ledge under the windows; or just with floor cases perpendicular to the windows, spaced wide like open-access shelves, but having old-fashioned ledges to help consultation of reference books? Here is opportunity for ingenious planning.

Standard Library. Mr. Foster’s plan of a Standard Library room at Providence has something to commend it from an educational or didactic point of view, but it would hardly be much missed by the public. In new buildings where all available space is in demand for more imperative needs, I doubt if I should include such a room, unless already adopted as part of the policy of the library. If it is, however, to be included it should have an architectural dignity—not necessarily splendid—to conform to its purpose. Why might not this be combined with the trustees’ room? The bindings of the books would adorn the walls, and make the room a worthy meeting place of the board at evening, without interfering with what I imagine is not an eager or crowded use by the public during the day.

Or, if its object be not quiet reading, but to bring the books prominently to notice, to exhibit them, why not treat it as an open access or club room, open to conversation? Would not this further its primary object, attract visitors, and promote taking these volumes home or into quiet reading rooms to read?

Light-Reading Rooms

Half-hour reading.[319] This is generally called Magazine or Periodical room in our libraries, but I should include in it some provision for casual reading of books also. In 1903 I suggested at an Atlantic City Conference, shelving in such rooms for a class of books every library owns, but usually scatters under various classifications, although their common purpose is for episodical or temporary entertainment, such as is known as “half-hour reading.” On this shelving I advocated placing a good selection of the best short stories, readable essays, anthologies, brief poems, humor, and so on, to be read in the room, just as magazines are used, for such pastime as the reader’s time will afford.

“Three-quarters of the readers are destitute of literary culture, but need recreation and pastime.”—Winsor.[320]

My suggestion then evoked interest, but I do not know that it has been acted on anywhere. I renew it here as a use for wall shelving in periodical rooms for new buildings, and in concentrating there all recreative reading. In this light-reading room a certain amount of movement and noise must be expected, which will not much annoy the readers there. The coming and going of visitors whose stay must be brief, the handling of magazines or books, the turning of pages, the rustling of newspapers, perhaps the murmurs of children over illustrations, are to be expected. Here such wall shelving as has been suggested would not be out of place.

Periodicals. Here are kept such few local and metropolitan newspapers as are taken by the average library. Magazines and weeklies either lie freely on large flat tables or are kept for open access in wooden pigeon-holes or pockets against the walls without intervention of any attendant, or are kept behind a counter to be issued by a special attendant on call. Where there are many readers and a large number of serials, experience has shown that it is better to keep them in pigeon-holes behind a counter, to be delivered by an attendant.

“Where not a large number of periodicals is taken, they are usually placed on tables without a special attendant.”—Poole.[321]

The furniture of the room and its arrangement will depend on which system is to be used in the library. This should be settled in advance.

The chairs used here should be strong, but light; rubber-tipped so as to be noiseless when moved. Except in looking at illustrated papers, readers may prefer to hold octavo magazines, or books, in their hands, turning their chairs back or side to the light, in the easiest posture. Arm chairs for such use would be appropriate.

It is not supposed to be necessary to allow so much floor space for each reader in such rooms. Duff-Brown[322] considers 12 square feet enough in England, but our usage in America is 16 square feet, which is better for elbow room, passage and ventilation.

“In rooms for magazine reading, there should be more room for chairs than tables.”—Champneys.[323] This seems good advice, unless the periodicals are to be laid loose on the tables.

It is often the custom to put reviews and other serious magazines in the reading room, leaving all the popular or recreative serials in the room for light reading.

There are frequent articles in English library journals about arrangement of magazines, but I find nothing among them which seems to improve on methods generally understood here. See Duff-Brown.[324]

“A really effective system, of displaying periodicals is about as difficult to find as a first folio Shakespeare.”—Burgoyne.[325]

The few newspapers taken are generally mounted on sticks and hung from racks, though I have seen them left loose on tables.

Newspaper Room

In English libraries this department seems prominent in all buildings, large and small. “The English newsroom is generally the largest and most convenient room in the building.” In America, a few newspapers are kept in the light-reading room, but only large public libraries have separate rooms for newspapers. Where a considerable collection is kept, a large room will be required, with single sloping desks against the walls or double desks on the floor, with or without stools; or sometimes the papers are hung on the hooks of racks, and used at tables (with chairs) close by.

The newspaper room may be put in the basement with a separate entrance, as its use and supervision are generally separate from other uses of the library.

“Newspaper and magazine rooms should not be too large; two 30 × 50 are much less noisy than one 50 × 60, less draughty and easier to ventilate.”—Burgoyne.[326]

The opinion expressed by Dr. Poole in the United States Public Library Report of 1876,[327] “It is thought in some libraries that the expense of newspapers could be better applied to some other purposes,” seems to be echoed in recent discussions in England. See The Library Assistant, Vol. 4.[328] A moderate view advanced at one meeting was this: “It is exceedingly doubtful whether a newsroom is justified in towns with a population under 45,000.” The matter is well summed up in the Library Association Record.[329] Reading the debates, and weighing the arguments pro and con, does not lead one to recommend planners of American libraries to provide more space for newspapers than it is customary to allow with us: a rack or two in small and medium libraries, for local papers and one or two metropolitan journals, but no separate newspaper rooms except in the public libraries of large cities. Even there, I imagine their use is more for reference and information than it seems to be in England. Champneys[330] calls the newspaper reader “a professional loafer.”

However, “In libraries where the newspaper room is somewhat inaccessible, there is little annoyance from the tramp element. Branch library reading rooms in New York City, put on the third story for lack of sufficient space below, are almost entirely free from tramps. People willing to climb to that story really want to read.”—Bostwick.[331]

This fact is worth noting in planning large libraries.

Children’s Room

This department, now considered a cardinal necessity in all libraries great or small, is a development of the last generation. No special rooms were devoted to this purpose before 1890. “Today it is tending to be a practically separate library, with its own books, circulation, catalogues, statistics and staff.”—(Bostwick.[332]) So great a success has it become, that a library without special provision for children would now be a curiosity.

In the smallest libraries, with only one room, separate tables and shelves are set aside for children. As libraries grow in grade, separate rooms are provided with special attendants as well. Here the shelving, tables and chairs are lower, often of two or three suitable sizes.

The idea at the outset was to segregate children so that their motion and chatter should not annoy adults who were using the library; now the notion is entirely educational, to catch and interest young children, so that they will continue to use the library as they grow up. There are even separate rooms for smaller tots, on the kindergarten idea of attracting them with pictures before they begin to read. This purpose is furthered by having suitable pictures on the walls. Rooms are also fitted up for small audiences to whom stories are read or told.

Although children are only expected for a few hours every day, they are apt to swarm at those hours. The room or rooms so used ought to be at the same time homelike, cozy, attractive, and also well ventilated. The ground floor is the best place, though the basement has often to be used, in default of room above, and children have been sent up one flight of stairs, because they are better able to climb than adults. The stairs and hand rails should in this case conform to children’s stature. If they can be shut off from the reading room by sound-proof partitions, quiet is preserved for the readers. Children are apt to be restless and murmurous if not noisy. “Children do not mind noise and crowding; adults do.” In large buildings separate entrances are provided for children.

Special reference rooms are even provided in some libraries, and in the largest buildings teachers’ rooms adjoin, so as to bring all school influences into the same suite and system.

Bostwick[333] advises (why?) that shelving should be confined to the walls if possible.

In planning, the librarian should determine the scheme he will adopt for treating this problem, and a room or portion of a room or a suite of rooms should be assigned and fitted after the latest and most approved manner.

Discussion is still active, and new methods are developed yearly with constantly improving conveniences.

In England this movement appears to be viewed with some distrust. Duff-Brown[334] speaks of “the epidemic raging in the United States.” But he devotes four paragraphs to it, and Champneys[335] three pages. The latter, quoting Clay’s School Buildings, gives an interesting formula of heights of seats and tables for children of different ages, though he thinks it difficult to get the small children to use low tables and the reverse. He also specifies the need of low hand rails for children on stairs; even two rails, one for adults, one for children.

See Marvin, pp. 12, 17, 18; Dana, Lib. Pr., 167; Bostwick, 78, 85; L. J. 1897, p. 181; Conf. 19, 28; 10 P. L. 346.

Women’s Rooms

The separation of boys and girls, usually by a low hand rail, is favored in children’s rooms, by obvious parallelism with school customs, but the separation of men and women into different rooms has never been common in America, although separate tables are sometimes assigned to “the use of ladies.” But no “woman’s room” is a necessity to consider in planning. In England it has been different. Duff-Brown[336] reports eighty women’s rooms among over four hundred public libraries there, but he pronounces them unnecessary. Champneys[337] also thinks them “an indifferent success.” “Experience has proved that a separate room for women is unnecessary.”—(Burgoyne.[338]) If that is the verdict where they have been extensively tried, there seems to be no good precedent for wasting space on them in American libraries.

In various discussions of this subject, it has been stated that women sometimes use tables set aside for them, but not special rooms, and that such rooms require closer supervision, because the few who use them are more apt to mutilate or deface books and periodicals than any other class of readers.

The Blind

See Bostwick’s chapter on “Libraries for the Blind.”[339]

“Books for the blind are handled by a public library in much the same way as those for the seeing. It is common to have a separate department or suite of rooms, but this is not necessary.... Owing to the size of the books, shelving for them is of unusual depth.... Free access to the shelves is as valuable to a blind reader as to one who has the use of his eyes.”

“The question of space will arise in many places. No space could, however, be devoted to a more humane and valuable purpose than the storage of books for the blind, and every encouragement and support should be given to the movement.”—Duff-Brown.[340]

Because of the space required, very careful consideration should be given by the building committee as to how much space the conditions of their community will allow them to give to such special wants. If they decide to have rooms for the blind, these ought to be, if possible, near an entrance from the street level. In regard to dimensions, shelving, etc., the librarian would best inquire of some library of the same grade and class. Experience is the best teacher, and the local treatment of this subject must be defined and specially planned for.

Special Rooms

Small libraries have no space for differentiation. One room, or a few rooms, must be divided by rails, low bookcases, or glass partitions, into the functions they can manage to separate. But as a library enlarges, and grows to other stories, it finds many advantages in segregating different classes of books and readers, thus approaching Dr. Poole’s plan of separate reading rooms, or the department plan in universities. Even before any such activities have grown enough to occupy a full room, any space in a new plan which can be spared may well be marked “unassigned.”

Some of these rooms are used in all public libraries of all sizes except the smallest; some of them are desirable in many other classes of libraries.

These rooms, in about the order of need, as libraries grow, are,—

• (1) Local Literature,
• (2) Study,
• (3) Classes,
• (4) Patents, Science, Useful Arts,
• (5) Public Documents,
• (6) Art: Prints,
• (7) Music,
• (8) Maps,
• (9) Education,
• (10) Lectures,
• (11) Exhibitions,
• (12) Pamphlets,
• (13) Bound Serials,
• (14) Special Collections,
• (15) Information,
• (16) Conversation,
• (17) Unassigned.

These rooms, except Information, do not demand ground-floor space, but can be assigned to upper floors. In a large library, they will be accessible by elevators anywhere; in a two-story library, or even in one of three stories with easy flights of stairs, the fewer readers who want to use them may be asked to climb rather than the larger throngs of general readers or borrowers of books.

Local Literature. I take up this first, because even a very small library may begin a collection, if only part of a shelf can be given to it. “In a small place,” says Bostwick,[341] “the library may go as far in such directions as its resources warrant, and even without financial ability, it may stimulate sufficient interest to secure volunteer helpers.” If you have or can get to look at Duff-Brown,[342] see his specification of the books, etc., a library may include in a “local collection.” Everything local in the way of printed matter, is his summary. See a series of articles in The Library Asso. Rec., Vol. 7, 1905, pp. 1 to 30, and Vol. 13, p. 268. This is an English example well worth following.

A local collection may include, besides books and pamphlets, maps, prints, even pictures, for which hanging space will be needed on the walls. Indeed, if a local antiquarian society can be drawn in as assistant handlers and curators, such a collection may assume a museum phase, and may need low bookcases for books, with ledges above for models and busts, cupboards for pamphlets and small objects, even glass cases for relics. It should have floor space for visitors before all these cases, and a large table and chairs for committee meetings. It is one of the rooms which might be shared by the trustees where accommodations are restricted. There is ample opportunity for special planning in such a room, in accordance with the policies of the administration of the library.

Study Rooms. Here again the smallest libraries cannot spare special facilities. All users must share the limited space available. But when they get beyond the one-room or one-floor stage, some corners or intervals between other departments, or ends of corridors, or mezzanine rooms, might be found for private rooms, to be used for individuals, either alone or with one scribe or typewriter. Even in small towns, there are cultivated citizens, or professional people, or teachers, or reporters, even authors, who wish to use books, and prepare manuscripts alone, and can safely be trusted to do so without supervision. How great a service such rooms might do in any American community, I do not think is generally recognized.

“It is the library alone that can furnish inventors, investigators, and students of all kinds the opportunity to forestall wasteful effort.”—Bostwick.[343]

For individuals, such rooms can be small, and low, of almost any form, simply furnished with one small table and two chairs, with shelves at one side or end for a few books, and one window, not necessarily large, but giving good light on the table.

“A large room with stalls, or a series of small rooms with shelves, for students making protracted investigations and needing to keep books several days.”—Winsor.[344]

Duff-Brown, however, thinks that students’ rooms only establish another “privileged class,” and make further demands upon the staff for service and oversight.

Rooms for Classes. In close connection with the last idea (indeed rooms might be interchanged for use either several and collective), are the many classes, clubs, associations, etc., in the community so closely connected with the use of books that the library ought to offer them whatever hospitality its space can afford.

“The modern public library is the helpful friend of scientific, art, and historical societies, of the educational labor organizations, of city improvement organizations, of teachers’ clubs, parents’ societies, and women’s clubs. At the library should be rooms suitable for their gatherings.”

“One of the most important things in a library of any size is a room where a class can be met by their teacher, and not interfere with the regular work of the library.”—C. A. Cutter.[345]

“Study clubs, reading circles, extension teaching, and other allied agents.”—Dewey.

See liberal and well-lighted group of “seminar rooms” in the Wisconsin State Historical Society plans.—Adams.[346]

In a paper by Arthur E. Bostwick (which I happened upon in an English periodical[347]), there is this interesting account of the various uses of rooms in branch libraries at St. Louis: “Each has an assembly room and one or more club rooms, which are loaned free to any organizations desiring to use them for intellectual advancement, or for legitimate forms of recreation, such as women’s clubs, chess clubs, groups of working men, socialists, classes in literature and philosophy, self-culture, and reading circles, art or handicraft societies, athletic clubs, dramatic clubs, military organizations, ecclesiastical bodies, the Boy Scouts, high school alumni, English classes for immigrants, D. A. R., etc.” I imagine that most trustees would draw the line far short of the “etc.,” but the list indicates to what length libraries are going on social and sociological lines, for which provision must be made in building.

Rooms for this purpose may be plainly painted and plainly furnished, but should be adequately high, especially well ventilated and made cheerful by color and light. How to define their sizes would be a matter for the local librarian to guess at, with his line of activities well mapped out. Where so much work beyond mere reading is to be done, there should be at least one sizable lecture room (the basement would do), one or more large rooms divisible by screens into several smaller rooms, and as many smaller rooms with sound-proof provisions as space would allow.

Patents, Science, Useful Arts. In industrial communities a room or suite of rooms for the literature of science and the useful arts, including sets of English and American patent specifications, will be found useful. Winsor[348] emphasized the necessity of providing for rapid growth in this department, at that time “150 large volumes a year.”

A small library may properly shelve such scientific books as would especially benefit its working constituency, but could not think of patent reports. This is a luxury for the large libraries only, with present and prospective space to spare. Floor space is necessary for readers, with tables large and plentiful enough for many large volumes and plates outspread. Shelf room is needed around the walls or in alcoves, on the ground floor for the octavos, above for the larger books. Where the stories of the building have been already made lofty (it would not be necessary to have them lofty for this room alone), a favorite form has recurred to the first American “typical plan,” to have around the walls tiers of alcoves and galleries combined, about the only place this discredited arrangement survives.

Where the height of stories does not invite this form, such rooms can well take a frequent law library phase, with tables near front windows and combinations of wall shelving and wall cases opposite the windows, narrow alcoves as it were, for book storage, but not for readers.

Here seems an excellent opportunity to install some form of the new sliding cases, say a row of such cases along an inner blind wall, with tables and chairs toward the windows.

Public Documents. “Pub. Docs.” are a burden on all libraries. They are the first gift to small village libraries, the accumulating gifts to growing libraries, the incubus on large libraries, and yet all feel obliged to keep at least part of them. Some of the national and state publications are very valuable, when distributed throughout the classes to which they belong; but of the large mass of records which ought to be preserved somewhere, what shall be retained, and where shall it be kept?

“Do not waste time, in the early days of the library, in securing public documents, save a few of purely local value. Take them if offered and store them.”—Dana.[349]

See the sensible suggestions of Bostwick:[350] “Government documents are a bugbear to many libraries.... We have some getting more than they want, others that have to buy them. The library of moderate size, not a repository, is inclined to disregard all government publications, which is a pity. The large library will shelve everything.”

A serious problem in planning is where to stow this superfluity without interfering with essentials.

In an old house closets, upper stories and dry cellars can be fitted with fixed wooden shelving (for the sets are of uniform or similar sizes), some for octavos, some for quartos. New buildings may have a room or rooms assigned almost anywhere out of the way, even in the center of cellar or attic, with only artificial light. If the original or duplicates of the most important volumes are shelved under subjects elsewhere, the use of pub. docs. will be so infrequent that their location is a subordinate question.

How much space to assign is a question that depends on the circumstances and policy of the library; for instance, whether it is keeping United States, state and foreign government issues; or only one or part of one. In a small library a closet or an obscure corner will do. In a larger library, a dry part of the basement or cellar is enough. In a very large library, wherever space can be best spared.

Here again sliding cases may come into play.

How much space this literature may occupy is indicated in the L. C. Report of 1901,[351] which states that there were 87,654 volumes under this head in the Library of Congress at that date, besides 12,442 state “Session laws.”

Duplicates. A room for laying aside duplicates is needed in all libraries large enough to have them. It needs as much rough wooden wall or floor shelving as the number or prospective number of duplicates demands, and can be put in cellar, basement, attic, or in any place not needed by the more active departments. It is one of the rooms that do not absolutely need good natural light, because it is not to be used by readers or the public.

There should, however, be space enough for ready access to the books by attendants, and light enough for inspection. If there is to be any attempt made at systematic and continued exchange of duplicates with other libraries, this space and light will be more needed than if storage only is required.

As handling, access and inspection may be required at any moment, this class of books seems hardly adapted to sliding-case shelving.

Art. Small libraries cannot spare a separate room for this literature. But in many buildings in æsthetic communities of no great size, an “Art Room” is set aside before other extra departments attain the dignity of separation. Often a suite of rooms is assigned to the ornamental arts, Art, Prints and Photographs, Architecture, etc. Here, if anywhere, some elaboration in cases, shelving and furniture, in harmony with the motive, is excusable. The rooms surely should be most attractive in form and color. The bindings in themselves of books of these classes are usually decorative.

An unusual proportion of the shelving should be designed for large quartos and folios, to be laid flat and handled with care; part of the shelves, at least, with rollers.

Glazed bookcases preserve valuable books from dust and grime. Sliding doors leave them accessible. Large tables or desks or sloping ledges, with specially good light, are needed.

The location of such rooms should be prominent. No space can usually be spared on the ground floor, but a second floor, with simple, dignified, easy stairs, is an excellent location, and the top floor superb, as it allows good top light without interfering with wall space for shelving and engravings above. Especially is this floor appropriate, if its center is allotted to an exhibition room on whose walls or in whose cases public exhibitions of the library’s artistic prints and portfolios can be occasionally held.

Prints. Bostwick[352] says, “A department of the public library that is increasing in interest, and that may be said to be partly art collection, partly repository of useful information in pictorial form, is the print department.... Such collections are of value” (to eight specified classes of readers).

This use should be considered in planning an art room or suite.

See fine photographic view of the Division of Prints in L. C. Report 1901,[353] which will suggest ideas of arrangement.

Public Photographing. “In connection with such a suite, in libraries where visitors are allowed to make copies, a small room fitted for photographing, with an adjoining dark room, would be a convenience. In the largest libraries copies might be made for users at their cost.”—Burgoyne.[354]

Bernard R. Green writes me, from the Library of Congress, “Be sure to emphasize conveniences for photographing and other processes of copying.”

Dr. Garnett in Essays on Librarianship[355] argues that every first class library should have a department to reproduce books and manuscripts by photography, managed by an expert on permanent salary, with a complete equipment.

Burgoyne, in The Libr. Asso. Record,[356] wishes for public use in large libraries “a room say 10 × 15 with north light, for making photographic copies of prints and plates so that valuable books need not be taken from the premises.”

Music. Small libraries cannot afford a separate room for this use. Such provision as is necessary can be made in the open access rooms or near the desk. Bostwick remarks[357] that music is more valuable for circulation than for reference, sheets of music, and collections, being usually in quarto or small folio size. Duff-Brown advises[358] that it be shelved with uprights only eighteen inches apart, so that volumes or pieces will support each other.

As the collection assumes an important size, and includes sets of opera scores and assembled works, it may be given a separate room, or two small rooms, with special wall shelving. It has become somewhat usual, in large libraries, to put a piano here for trying scores, and phonographs for repeating them. When this is done, the room or one of the rooms should, of course, have perfectly sound-proof partitions, to shut off sound from other departments.

Provision of some kind must be considered for pianola rolls and phonographic records.

This department may well be assigned to an upper floor. It should, of course, provide shelving for the literature of music.

Maps. Any small library may have atlases, for which special shelving must be provided. An economical provision can be made by putting flat shelving under the table holding the catalog case.

A separate room for this branch of literature, which includes bound volumes, loose sheets, wall charts, globes, etc., is set aside only in large libraries. It cannot be expected on the ground floor, but might be on the same floor with Art, as it requires similar height, arrangement, light, and access.

Maps are kept in three forms, as in volumes (either coming in atlases, or bound up by the library) or in loose sheets or on rollers. For volumes, sliding, flat, and upright shelving will provide suitable stowage. For sheet maps or charts, large, shallow wooden drawers in dust-proof cases, sometimes with wooden flaps in front, are usual. Patent metallic map-cases are better, but more expensive. A high room affords wall space for such charts as can be read at a distance, and are frequently used. Wall space from the floor up should be reserved for hanging maps. Andrews and others recommend Jenkins’ Map Roller. For using maps in any form, large tables in the centre of the room (trestle tables will do, to be brought in when wanted), and sloping desks or ledges under the windows, may be provided.

As sufficient space for this department is often hard to spare, a good location for it is at the end of a corridor. Here doors can be omitted, and the corridor space can be taken into the room. The corridor wall opposite windows is a fine place for hanging maps; the floor of the corridor, for globes and the like.

See C. W. Andrews,[359] Windsor,[360] Bostwick,[361] Duff-Brown,[362] Champneys,[363] The Library Assistant, Vol. 8.[364] See also a fine view of the Library of Congress map room in their 1901 report.[365] To show how important a department this may become, and what room it may occupy, take note that the Library of Congress has 2,600 atlases and 57,000 maps and charts.

Education. This is an important subject in large libraries, and may even demand a separate room in smaller grades where there is much school work done.

A simple room of moderate size and height, simply furnished, with wall shelving or floor cases for pedagogic literature will answer all purposes for teachers, committees and interested citizens.

Its position would best be near the school or children’s department, using the same entrance.

It might also be used for teachers with classes, for laying out and sending out books to schools, or for a school reference department.

Indeed, as all Art rooms may properly be grouped together and assigned to the same floor, all rooms connected with children, schools, teachers, or education should be shared, or grouped together with a common entrance, corridor, or stairway.

Lectures. There seems to be a difference of opinion in this country as to the necessity or even the advisability of giving up space to assembly rooms or lecture rooms.

“In a small building an assembly room is a nuisance,” says Bostwick.[366] See, however, his enumeration quoted under Rooms for Classes,[367] of the uses to which an assembly room has been put in a St. Louis branch.

In England, lecture rooms among progressive libraries are considered essential.[368]

It seems to me that a part of the basement, in all buildings which have basements, can generally be spared for a fairly large room to be put to a variety of uses, which even if not directly germane to the use of books, are proper work for a neighborhood club, which is what the modern small or branch library is coming to be. A fine room can be made under radial bookcases.

It is not necessary, or wise to have a sloping floor such as is used in colleges or public halls; too much height would be wasted by the slope. Nor need the platform be large or high;—a foot high, enough for store-room under it, through trap doors, for such extra camp chairs as are needed for audiences; with enough light, removable tables, and light chairs for all uses to which the room might be put; a dead white wall back of the platform, and such arrangements as would allow stereopticon exhibitions; effective ventilation for a full room, even with the low ceilings of a basement, and you have provision for many needs of a small library. In larger buildings larger rooms may be provided, but always such as could be used in various ways, at different hours of day or night.

Six square feet, Duff-Brown[369] and Champneys[370] consider enough to allow for every auditor, including seats, gangways and platforms. Marvin[371] says the same, but does not include platform.

For the use of audiences, while the rest of the library is working, there should be a separate outside door or wide door into a corridor directly communicating with the outside.

As such rooms are not so much used for reading, and are not high in the walls, light fixtures need not be so numerous or powerful.

Exhibitions. Where funds are scant, I doubt whether it is best to provide an art gallery for permanent or occasional exhibitions of pictures, with the necessary disposition of lights. But in sizable buildings, a large room can be spared for exhibitions directly or indirectly connected with books, and such a room can be so fitted up as to receive busts, statues and pictures presented to the library.

The center of the top floor of the main building offers an excellent position for a large room for exhibition purposes, with daylight from the roof. If suitable wall material and covers are provided as background for pictures, with picture mouldings and with glass cases for the floor, it is ready for showing specimens of printing or binding, rare books, manuscripts, or prints and engravings.

As such an apartment would not be used for reading, it may be a common corridor for many rooms opening around it, which are devoted partly to exhibition, partly to consultation; for instance, art, music and maps. Thus arranged, the top floor would segregate many functions which elsewhere might interfere with the quiet of readers; and would provide most agreeable conversation facilities.

Pamphlets. In many libraries gifts of pamphlets are received, which cannot be separately catalogued at once. It is sometimes necessary to let them accumulate until time is found to assort them, decide what to keep and what to give away, what to bind and what to file in pamphlet boxes. In small libraries they can be kept temporarily in closets. In large libraries they often assume such bulk as will fill a room. Their stay in this form is so temporary that the room assigned can be remote (in the attic, for instance, of an old house), and very plain, not even finished, except for such light as will be needed in sorting and such heating as will keep workers comfortable.

Trestle tables, kitchen chairs, rough fixed wooden wall or floor shelving, will answer all purposes, and save money for use elsewhere. When the pamphlets are boxed or made ready for binding, they need not return here, but may find their places elsewhere in the stack or special rooms.

Bound Serials. Except a few serials which cover only special subjects, these are usually kept together, for general magazines in use are somewhat like encyclopædias. They are perhaps more readable, but are not often used for reading; rather for reference through Poole and other indexes. In any considerable collection they occupy so much shelf room that they will soon fill a large room by themselves, and they are so kept in many libraries. In the Library of Congress there are 123,805 volumes of bound periodicals, 68,127 of them “general.”[372] If placed in the stack, the basement is a good assignment for them, for various reasons. If they are to have a room elsewhere it can be anywhere available; with wooden floor cases (movable shelves) and plain walls and ceiling so colored as to reflect light. As they are often heavy and awkward to handle, and as readers may want to give them a first examination on the spot, tables at one side of the room and carrels in the windows will facilitate use.

Sets of society publications are often kept in the same room with these serials.

Bound Newspapers. These require different storage. Small libraries will have to keep what they get, as they keep atlases and other folios. Growing libraries which have fireproof vaults will want to keep valuable local files there. Larger libraries with many newspapers must settle just how to keep them. It is not wise, even not possible, to set such heavy folios on end; they must be kept flat on the shelves. At first, economy may require using plain wooden shelves of special measurements, laying two or three folios on their sides on each shelf. But if there is much use of the papers, handling them in this way is difficult for readers and injurious to the folios. As soon as money can be spared, proper conservation and convenience require metallic roller shelves, which specialists will furnish. Those in the Massachusetts State Library have been found very satisfactory.

Champneys[373] advises “very rough and ready storage; special rooms with open racks; magazines around the walls, newspapers in the center.”

Special Collections. “Large libraries are apt to receive gifts, to be kept apart, either from direction or policy.”—(Winsor.[374]) “A large library never has enough rooms for them.”—(Poole.[375]) Fletcher[376] speaks of the numerous gifts to libraries to buy books in some special department, giving a list of eighty-two subjects of such benefactions, with the names of recipient libraries, summarized from Lane and Bolton’s Harvard Bibliographical Contributions. The Library of Congress Report of 1901[377] gives a list of over one hundred and fifty subjects for separate rooms. Duff-Brown[378] mentions many English special collections.

Where the donations or bequests are generous, it is customary to set aside separate rooms named for the donor, to books thus given. As such libraries are not often for popular reading, but are used mainly by special students, they may be assigned to upper floors. Gratitude suggests that they be treated more ornately than the stack, or the general reading rooms, and in such suites, indeed, there is opportunity for an artistic architect to get noble effects without extravagant expenditure. Wall shelving is appropriate, or even alcoves, for their idea is like that of private or club libraries. Floor cases or special stacks of less severe plainness than must be used elsewhere, are needed as the collections become so large as to require close packing.

The local librarian can tell how many such rooms are needed for the collections already set aside, but how many to anticipate in building is hard for anyone to say. Rooms or floors may be reserved, and marked “unassigned,” but experience shows that such spare spaces are usually wanted for some growth before the new building is completed.

Information. In small libraries there is some attendant at the general delivery desk who can answer miscellaneous questions. In larger libraries, this duty is often assigned to one of the staff occupying a separate desk near the delivery or the public catalog, or supervising the reading room. In large libraries the Providence example is good, where a counter on one side of the large delivery hall is set aside for this use, with its special collection of reference books handy. Only in very large buildings is a separate room necessary and even then it will generally be better to use a small room near the vestibule, or a nook, or niche or counter, wherever most convenient for the public to inquire and where it interferes least with other uses.

Conversation. Strict quiet is so necessary in reading rooms, and talking has to be discouraged so much in most of the building, that a large library ought to have some place when staff or visitors can be allowed a chance to talk when they must. Corridors are usually free from restraint, but it is not often possible to find seats there, or secure privacy. Vestibules and lobbies, however, are never needed for reading, and even if used for exhibitions, can allow more or less comfortable seats, so arranged in window nooks or recesses as to afford quiet corners for conversation. The crossing of corridors, or room under a dome (if such an architectural misfortune happens) can be utilized for this purpose; indeed, any vacant spaces on the floor plans, such as abound in many buildings, can be used for exhibition, decoration, information, conversation, even perhaps for smoking,—any diversions outside of reading which readers might like.

Miss Marvin[379] wants, even in small libraries, “a room in which conversation may be allowed, for the use of committees and for adults who meet at the library by appointment.”

“Conversation rooms,” says Champneys,[380] “may certainly be introduced in large libraries, and their presence has the advantage of being a continual reminder that conversation is not permitted in the reading rooms. In small libraries ... the addition of a large room which can be used for committee meetings, lectures, exhibitions, and a variety of other purposes, cannot but be recommended.”

In other words, talk can be allowed in lecture or exhibition rooms.

Staff talk is well provided for in any library in the staff work and rest rooms. Subdued talk about books might be allowed in reference rooms or open access rooms. This, with freedom to talk in halls and vestibules, may preclude necessity for a separate conversation room even in large libraries.

Unassigned. Notwithstanding this list of special rooms required, including most of the uses which can be foreseen, there is always opportunity in a progressive library, for more space still to be used, either in enlarging departments, or in establishing new ones. In planning, the wise way is to include specific assignment of space or rooms to all existing departments, and such others as seem to be on the lines of probable development, but also to get more room still, to be marked “unassigned.” It will be taken up sooner than anyone anticipates. Indeed, as has been already said, there are many instances, where the spare space left “unassigned” in planning has been claimed even before the building is finished.

Instead of having lofty rooms, it is always best to divide the height of a library into as many floors as possible, making none loftier than actual use will require for light and ventilation. Never allow superfluous height of rooms or stories for architectural effect, outside or inside. Only by watching and limiting waste of space, in breadth, length or height, can you get the maximum of opportunity out of money you spend, or be able to get either all the departments you want or unassigned room additional.

If basement or cellar is not all taken up with your assignment of departments and rooms, underdrain and line the foundations carefully, and provide for such future features as duplicates, public documents, or rows of sliding cases for close packing of less used books.

PART IV
FURNITURE AND EQUIPMENT

I have mentioned these already under different headings, where they materially affected the size, shape, lighting, or situation of rooms. I shall not go into an enumeration or description of different outfit, because there are so many specialists, so many tastes, so many systems in different libraries, that selection of the latest and best devices offered by dealers accessible to the librarian is very easy. But a few general remarks on one or two articles, may properly be included in a general discussion on planning.

In the first place, never allow the furniture, fixtures or fittings to be chosen primarily for architectural effect, but for special use and fitness in every detail. In material, in shape, in hue, have them harmonize with the surroundings, for in such harmony lies the most effective and the least expensive beauty. Here, the taste of the architect can be of the utmost assistance. But, if possible, bar out what has been called “architectural” furniture, even if money can be spared for it. Heavy show-pieces, hard to move, hard to use, inconvenient, uncomfortable, wasteful of space, are an abomination in any library.

As to proportion of expenditure, Duff-Brown[381] allows eighteen per cent of total cost for fittings and furniture. He suggests, however, that fittings which are fixtures should be counted as part of the permanent structure. Perhaps this qualification explains the different estimate of Champneys,[382] who allows only ten per cent for furniture.

Bostwick[383] also recommends that fixtures be included in the general contract, and movables (which he specifies) be bought separately. He makes an excellent suggestion, that where this is done, a piece of the material to be matched, in its finished form, be sawed in two, and one piece handed to each contractor, so that the furniture and fixtures will match exactly. How important this is will be realized at many libraries, where the tint of fittings meant to match, often “swears.”

Miss Ahern, editor of Public Libraries, writes to me, in answer to an inquiry:—

“I believe in putting technical equipment outside the lines of library building and architecture. A builder cannot make it as well as a specialist in library equipment.”

My experience leads me to endorse her advice most heartily. I would say further, what she probably modestly refrains from saying, on account of her business connections, I would get the catalogues of The Library Bureau, ask and take their advice, and give them the preference where their prices are as low. I say this (I have not even an acquaintance with their present management) because theirs was the first attempt to serve libraries on this line intelligently, and I have understood that many years of altruistic experiment, advised by good librarians, were spent before they even met their expenses; so that their services merit a reward.

Miss Marvin[384] gives a “Typical List of Furniture” for a small building, with prices ruling in her section at the time she wrote. She fears, however, that she may have erred toward too great economy, “cheap furniture being unsightly as well as unprofitable as an investment.”

One matter apparently often forgotten in planning is the matching or contrasts of color, furniture as well as woodwork, shelving, and walls and lamp shades. Not only is the general cheer and comfort of the library secured by harmonious environment, but eyesight is deeply concerned in soft and soothing effects. Here observation and taste may effect wonders in planning for both “utilitas” and “venustas.”

Tables

These deserve a separate chapter; they are used everywhere.

“Good, plain, solid,” epitomizes Champneys.[385]

“Use small tables and light chairs instead of the large heavy tables and ‘artistic’ chairs, conformed to the style of the building, but awkward in use.”—Fletcher.[386]

“The old style of long tables is now thought cumbersome,” says Bostwick.[387] This I endorse, though architects prefer large tables in large rooms, as more in proportion. He advises small, rectangular or circular tables for not more than six readers each. I doubt the circular in libraries where space is scant. They waste room.

“Should not be too long, or if double not too narrow.”—Duff-Brown.[388]

“Tables for four give readers a feeling of privacy.”—Eastman.

For this reason I rather incline to slightly sloping desks for two, like school desks, in reading rooms; all facing one way; all with a low back and sides, with a fillet at the front, to keep books and papers from falling; with extension slides or trough drawers for open books at each side of each reader. This form, it seems to me, combines a minimum of space for desk and passages, with a maximum of convenience and seclusion for readers. In the hours when the room was not thronged, there would be a desk to a reader. If the desks were rightly faced and the windows and lamps well arranged, no reader need have direct rays of light in his eyes, nor dazzling reflection from his paper.

As regards height of tables and space to a reader, see Eastman,[389] Marvin,[390] Bostwick,[391] Champneys,[392] Duff-Brown[393] and Carr.[394] They differ slightly, and each librarian would best experiment and judge for himself.

The British Museum has a kind of voting booth for each reader, with 4 feet 2 inches width of desk, high back and side screens for privacy. Cornell has something similar, but most libraries cannot afford so much space or such provisions for privacy.

Polished tops for tables (glass tops are sometimes inset) promote cleanliness, but are apt to give dazzling reflections of light.

One general caution echoed by many authorities warns against bottom cross rails between table legs. The scraping of readers’ feet against them is noisy, drops mud on the floor, and soon wears down the rails.

Many libraries have umbrella racks at the end of the tables, and here the owners can certainly have an eye on them. But if a coat room cannot be provided with an umbrella stand, cannot such a self-locking rack be placed in a lobby, as is seen in many restaurants?

Umbrellas are damp and unsightly as neighbors, and they occupy space readers might use.

“Readers’ tables should invariably have hinged flaps for writing, and slides to be drawn out to enlarge book space.

“There should be standing desks also.”—Edwards, Free Town Libraries.[395]

Perhaps there was a demand by readers for standing desks in England forty years ago when Edwards wrote, but few people want to stand now in America while reading or writing. A fixed standing ledge against any vacant stretch of wall near directories, dictionaries or the like, might be a convenience.

Chairs

Chairs are an important element in comfort. Strong enough for rough and constant use they must be. Graceful, or at least not ungainly, they ought to be and in most libraries they cannot be superfluously large. Indeed, there are many places where room can be saved by using stools, even fixed revolving stools. In some places armchairs (simple, not upholstered) will make readers more comfortable. For instance, in places where they can take up a book or magazine while reading and lean on the arms. Where a table is used to lay the book on, armchairs are not necessary, and they always need more room than plain chairs.

For a small library, the simplest kind of strong, bent-wood chairs suffice. Wood “saddle” seats, or rattan, are recommended rather than any upholstery, in larger libraries. To prevent noise, rubber tips to shoe the legs—the kind that screw in rather than slip on, are recommended.

Where there is no special coat room, hat racks underneath and such wire coat racks on the back, as are often used on theatre seats, are conveniences. Mr. Foster has these in the Providence Public Library, but he tells me they are not much used.

Chairs look better if they match each other, the tables, and the shelving, in material, style and color.

In planning it is wise after you have decided how many seats you want in each room, to have the architect sketch a floor plan and draw in shelving, tables and chairs, allotting to all the space which experience has taught is required for each reader in each room, as you intend to run it; and then carefully study the positions of the furniture and the dimensions of all the passages, checking results by examination of plans and visits to libraries which you think are satisfactory, until you are satisfied that you have reached the maximum of convenience with a minimum waste of space. A few hours’ time spent in this apparently trivial matter may mean much in ease of administration for years to come.

Delivery Desks

In the very small library, where every expense must be watched, all the furniture may have to be of common shapes and material, such as can be bought at the nearest furniture store. But as soon as any necessary luxury can be afforded, build or buy a specially designed charging and delivery desk, for this is the center and heart of almost all libraries of any size or any class. Do not have it built by a local carpenter, but wait until you can buy it from an experienced cabinet maker, or better, from a first-class library fittings expert. Study catalogs and plans to see what comes nearest to your needs and methods. If you find within your means a model which entirely suits you, get it. But if using of that or other makes of desks, or trying your own methods, or suggestions of other librarians, have led you to think that some modifications would suit better, it will not cost much more to have them made in the style which otherwise pleases you. Indeed, if your wants are wise, you will find that a dealer may meet them without extra charge, in the hope that his desk will thus commend itself to other librarians. Only by this gradual study put into form by clever librarians, can the ideal desk be gradually evolved.

See articles in the Library Journal, 19, 368; 21, 324; 22 (Conf.).

See dimensions, Carr, 18 L. J. 225, Duff-Brown 105.

From the foregoing remarks on points of contact between library and public it will be seen that many of these are localized at a single point—the loan desk. “This point may be regarded as the heart of a public circulating library.”—Bostwick.[396]

“It may happen that the position and size of this desk may determine in conspicuous particulars the character of the whole building.”—Idem.[397]

Catalog Cases

As the card system has been so universally adopted in America, and worked out to such standards of size that the most convenient makes, dimensions and sizes of cases for every grade of library are kept in the market in all large cities, there is no need of describing them here. But I would make some suggestions as to how they may influence planning.

Cases for small libraries may not need a special base, but can be used on any table, flat desk or ledge. As the library grows, it needs more cases, and a special base, such as all makers furnish, may be wanted. As cards, like books, are more easily used when they can be seen by the reader without craning or stooping, their increase is better met by broadening than by piling up, until wall space fails. In the first form of base used, it is better to utilize the space under the table, not so much in the cupboards or open spaces suggested in some catalogs, as in the upright or flat shelving of the quartos or folios (such as atlases) not handled so often as to interfere seriously with use of the cards, the primary purpose of the cases. This space beneath should certainly be put to some use wherever space is precious.

One form of catalog case frequently used is double-faced, set in the partition between the delivery room and the cataloguer’s room, the drawers pulling both ways, so that they can be used alternately in either room.

In planning, the first thing is to calculate how many cards, drawers and cases are needed for the number of books now in the library, and the annual increase probable, for at least ten years ahead; better twenty-five years, if there is wall or floor room which will be vacant that long. Then comes the very important decision, vitally affecting the size of the room, perhaps its location, and the disposition of the windows and lights; namely, where is the best possible location for the catalog, considering accessibility, supervision and help? Provision for growth can be lateral or up and down, or both. When the drawers get to be more than three or four in a tier, some provision must be made in front of or beside them for a ledge or narrow table on which they can be laid when taken out for inspection. In small libraries the combined catalog case and atlas rack can be built so that the table will form a ledge on all sides, for this use, without other provision.

Good location and light for the public catalog make one test of the excellence of your plan.

Bulletin Boards

One thing often forgotten in planning is to leave available wall space where necessary bulletins can be hung and easily read,—a practical detail not always seen by the artistic eye. Everyone has seen dome and rotunda libraries, all columns and no wall.

In planning, however, it is not hard to assign opportunities in spaces sufficiently well lighted, but of no use otherwise, for hanging bulletin boards, or so treating walls as to serve that purpose without special boards. Lobbies, vestibules, corridors, stairways, spacious delivery rooms, even railings outside, invite such use. In England, want-lists are cut out from the daily papers, mounted on boards, and thus hung outside the library for inspection by the unemployed.

Places for bulletins should also consider—they do not always—near-sighted people, and the undersized. Even in such unprosaic matters, careful planning in every phase can promote the usefulness of the library. I remember being shown about a new dome library in the west, where the librarian turned in distress and asked, “Do tell me where I can put up my bulletins or lists.” The only thing I could suggest was that she should get her architect to design a Parisian kiosk, to be set in the centre of the useless floor space, under the wasted heights of the dome; and use the exterior of the kiosk for bulletins, the interior for the brooms, for which no closet had been provided.

Miss Marvin[398] suggests spaces over radiators, shelves, periodical cases, and book bins. An ordinary screen, like those used in bar-rooms in any “wide-open” town, placed in the center of vestibule or hall would offer two sides for lists and bulletins posted at any convenient height.

If you have seen how masts going up through the cabins of river boats or coasters are backed with mirrors, you have a hint where to put bulletin boards in buildings on which columns have been inflicted.

Other Fittings

These vary so much with the grades and classes of libraries, they change so much as inventions are made from time to time, that I go into no further details here, but advise librarians who build to examine each item they want to use, in the light of the last improvements and the experience of fellow-librarians.

[Burgoyne gives thirty-two pages, illustrated, to English devices.]

Clocks, thermometers and barometers are especially recommended by Duff-Brown.[399] Clocks (noiseless) will be useful in many rooms, also thermometers, but we do not watch barometers so much in the United States as our English cousins do.

A page in your note book devoted to furniture and gear, when you start out on a reconnoissance among other libraries, will fix many fleeting impressions which may come into use later.

And in your trips may sharp eyes and keen common sense travel with you!

F.
APPENDIX

In this Appendix are printed quotations from the outlines for planning two of the largest of recent libraries, both public.

F.
APPENDIX