A small library may properly shelve such scientific books as would especially benefit its working constituency, but could not think of patent reports. This is a luxury for the large libraries only, with present and prospective space to spare. Floor space is necessary for readers, with tables large and plentiful enough for many large volumes and plates outspread. Shelf room is needed around the walls or in alcoves, on the ground floor for the octavos, above for the larger books. Where the stories of the building have been already made lofty (it would not be necessary to have them lofty for this room alone), a favorite form has recurred to the first American “typical plan,” to have around the walls tiers of alcoves and galleries combined, about the only place this discredited arrangement survives.
Where the height of stories does not invite this form, such rooms can well take a frequent law library phase, with tables near front windows and combinations of wall shelving and wall cases opposite the windows, narrow alcoves as it were, for book storage, but not for readers.
Here seems an excellent opportunity to install some form of the new sliding cases, say a row of such cases along an inner blind wall, with tables and chairs toward the windows.
Public Documents. “Pub. Docs.” are a burden on all libraries. They are the first gift to small village libraries, the accumulating gifts to growing libraries, the incubus on large libraries, and yet all feel obliged to keep at least part of them. Some of the national and state publications are very valuable, when distributed throughout the classes to which they belong; but of the large mass of records which ought to be preserved somewhere, what shall be retained, and where shall it be kept?
“Do not waste time, in the early days of the library, in securing public documents, save a few of purely local value. Take them if offered and store them.”—Dana.[349]
See the sensible suggestions of Bostwick:[350] “Government documents are a bugbear to many libraries.... We have some getting more than they want, others that have to buy them. The library of moderate size, not a repository, is inclined to disregard all government publications, which is a pity. The large library will shelve everything.”
A serious problem in planning is where to stow this superfluity without interfering with essentials.
In an old house closets, upper stories and dry cellars can be fitted with fixed wooden shelving (for the sets are of uniform or similar sizes), some for octavos, some for quartos. New buildings may have a room or rooms assigned almost anywhere out of the way, even in the center of cellar or attic, with only artificial light. If the original or duplicates of the most important volumes are shelved under subjects elsewhere, the use of pub. docs. will be so infrequent that their location is a subordinate question.