Serious Reading Room
By this phrase I mean the room for serious readers who want quiet, but do not need separate rooms. The English seem to call this the reference room, a name I apply only to their “quick” or “ready reference” room. Their “reading room” I call in this work periodical room, in which books for light or “half hour” reading in the library may be shelved.
This main or general reading room is usually on the ground floor in smaller libraries, but may be relegated to the second or the top, or indeed to any other convenient floor, accessible by elevators and in good communication with the stack.
In libraries where there is space for it on the ground floor, it can be supervised and served from the central delivery desk, but when elsewhere, it must have a separate desk and service.
In the largest libraries it often occupies a central position and a circular form. With a lofty open dome above, it is an impressive feature, but wastes space which might be utilized otherwise, and it is said to be more or less drafty and hard to heat evenly.
Position at the top as at the New York Public Library, has great advantage in light without waste of space, or superfluous loftiness. If over the stack (though the supporting walls have then to be stronger than usual) it has the advantage of short and straight lines to the books, and is said to lend itself to enlargement for readers and books pari passu. Good elevator service is a requisite in this form. “I incline more and more to the reading room on top of the building, especially in a large city.”—(Dewey.[311]) So Andrews, at the same Conference. He also said, “I believe in the single reading room [as compared with the Newberry or Poole’s plan] in a public library as a saving in trained assistants, and because it is impossible to classify readers in rooms as you do books.”
“Plain outlines are best. Recesses, alcoves, bay windows and nooks are difficult of supervision and spoil the public character of a library.”—O. Bluemner.[312]
The main requisites of a reading room are quiet, privacy, light, good air and space.
Quiet. This means not only regulations against conversation, but various physical conditions. For instance, absence of stir or motion; exclusion of such magazines as are merely looked over with fluttering of leaves; exclusion from the shelves (if there must be shelves around the walls) of books frequently wanted by readers and attendants; (reference books, class books, new books and others inviting frequent examination, should be put on the side or in a corner near the entrance, concentrating stir there;) noiseless floors; echoless walls and ceilings; exclusion of outside noises; no stairs directly into or out of the room; no passage through to other rooms.