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.