This idea is developed in The Librarian[305] by James Lymburn, who suggests “a store-room of any length, 22 feet wide by 35 feet high, in three stories, lighted from the roof through iron grating floors; with center passages of 9 feet, and sliding cases 6 feet long, closely packed in on each side.” He calculates that such a room 40 feet long would hold 100,000 volumes; its advantages being close storage and shelter from dust and sunlight.
See for illustration, Champneys.[306]
Jenner, in the Library Chronicle,[307] claims for the sliding case these merits: Cheapness, as compared with enlarging the building; possibility of gradual installation as needed; nearness to other shelves in a classification; absence of obstacle to light(?) or motion.
I have also received from a dealer in Oxford, England, a small pamphlet hinting at rather than describing, a room laid out after Lymburn’s idea. The pamphlet calculates it will save about half the space taken by stack storage. These cases, and Mr. Lymburn’s, are evidently double.
See also H. Woodbine in The Library Association Record.[308]
Per contra, H. M. Mayhew says in The Library,[309] “The drawback of the ordinary sliding or hanging or extension case is the difficulty of moving so great a weight whenever one book is wanted.”
I cannot figure out much from these English descriptions about problems of mechanism, repairs, lighting, or cleaning.
In America, the general idea of sliding cases has been discussed since Dr. Garnett’s description of the British Museum device in Library Notes, and since Mr. Gladstone called attention to it in the Nineteenth Century of March, 1890.
Mr. Gladstone describes what he calls these “book cemeteries” thus, as he has seen the “tentative and initial processes”:—
“The masses represented by filled bookcases are set one in front of the other, and in order that access may be had as required, they are set on trams inserted in the floor (which must be a strong one), and wheeled off and on as occasion requires.”