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.