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.