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.