Systems of this kind as used in libraries for all service except in stacks—for diffused light, shelves, service desks, and readers’ tables—seem to me to be most like natural daylight, and therefore best unless too costly.
The Report of Oculists and Electricians on the Boston Schools,[210] reported against indirect lighting, believing that “the cost of current to secure a proper illumination would be prohibitive.” They added, however, that “No actual experiments were made with indirect lighting, as objections to its use seemed so obvious as to render them unnecessary.”
This was in 1907 (for schools) before the experiments in libraries described below had been made.
So far they seem successful. The Crerar Library has tried one for two years. Mr. Andrews says in his last report (1912): “The indirect system of lighting has been extended over the official catalogue and the offices. Longer experience confirms the opinion that under suitable conditions the system is the best for the prolonged use of artificial light, although this is not always recognized by persons accustomed to more concentrated illumination. For this reason it has been supplemented to some extent in this library by table-lights in the reading-rooms.” He writes me further, “It is undoubtedly more expensive, but it is in my opinion also much better.”
A similar system was installed in the John Hay Memorial Library at Brown University a year ago. Mr. Koopman writes me (Apr. 18, 1912):—
“Given rooms reasonably adapted for it I should call it the ideal library system.
“In our high reading-room [twenty-eight feet high], the conditions are especially unfavorable owing to the deep panelling of the ceiling. But if I were to choose afresh I might still prefer our present system; I certainly should if I could have a flat ceiling [for maximum reflection of light]. But for rooms of twenty feet in height and under I do not see how for library purposes one could choose a different system; certainly most rooms in libraries come within that range.”
As the height of the ordinary room in a library need not be more than twelve or thirteen feet; or, if it has to correspond with two stack stories, 14 or 15 feet; Mr. Koopman’s commendation would hold for all library rooms, except lofty halls.
About the lighting of the lofty room, Mr. Charles A. Coolidge, architect of the John Hay Library, writes as follows:—