Duff-Brown, however, thinks that students’ rooms only establish another “privileged class,” and make further demands upon the staff for service and oversight.
Rooms for Classes. In close connection with the last idea (indeed rooms might be interchanged for use either several and collective), are the many classes, clubs, associations, etc., in the community so closely connected with the use of books that the library ought to offer them whatever hospitality its space can afford.
“The modern public library is the helpful friend of scientific, art, and historical societies, of the educational labor organizations, of city improvement organizations, of teachers’ clubs, parents’ societies, and women’s clubs. At the library should be rooms suitable for their gatherings.”
“One of the most important things in a library of any size is a room where a class can be met by their teacher, and not interfere with the regular work of the library.”—C. A. Cutter.[345]
“Study clubs, reading circles, extension teaching, and other allied agents.”—Dewey.
See liberal and well-lighted group of “seminar rooms” in the Wisconsin State Historical Society plans.—Adams.[346]
In a paper by Arthur E. Bostwick (which I happened upon in an English periodical[347]), there is this interesting account of the various uses of rooms in branch libraries at St. Louis: “Each has an assembly room and one or more club rooms, which are loaned free to any organizations desiring to use them for intellectual advancement, or for legitimate forms of recreation, such as women’s clubs, chess clubs, groups of working men, socialists, classes in literature and philosophy, self-culture, and reading circles, art or handicraft societies, athletic clubs, dramatic clubs, military organizations, ecclesiastical bodies, the Boy Scouts, high school alumni, English classes for immigrants, D. A. R., etc.” I imagine that most trustees would draw the line far short of the “etc.,” but the list indicates to what length libraries are going on social and sociological lines, for which provision must be made in building.
Rooms for this purpose may be plainly painted and plainly furnished, but should be adequately high, especially well ventilated and made cheerful by color and light. How to define their sizes would be a matter for the local librarian to guess at, with his line of activities well mapped out. Where so much work beyond mere reading is to be done, there should be at least one sizable lecture room (the basement would do), one or more large rooms divisible by screens into several smaller rooms, and as many smaller rooms with sound-proof provisions as space would allow.
Patents, Science, Useful Arts. In industrial communities a room or suite of rooms for the literature of science and the useful arts, including sets of English and American patent specifications, will be found useful. Winsor[348] emphasized the necessity of providing for rapid growth in this department, at that time “150 large volumes a year.”