The location of such rooms should be prominent. No space can usually be spared on the ground floor, but a second floor, with simple, dignified, easy stairs, is an excellent location, and the top floor superb, as it allows good top light without interfering with wall space for shelving and engravings above. Especially is this floor appropriate, if its center is allotted to an exhibition room on whose walls or in whose cases public exhibitions of the library’s artistic prints and portfolios can be occasionally held.
Prints. Bostwick[352] says, “A department of the public library that is increasing in interest, and that may be said to be partly art collection, partly repository of useful information in pictorial form, is the print department.... Such collections are of value” (to eight specified classes of readers).
This use should be considered in planning an art room or suite.
See fine photographic view of the Division of Prints in L. C. Report 1901,[353] which will suggest ideas of arrangement.
Public Photographing. “In connection with such a suite, in libraries where visitors are allowed to make copies, a small room fitted for photographing, with an adjoining dark room, would be a convenience. In the largest libraries copies might be made for users at their cost.”—Burgoyne.[354]
Bernard R. Green writes me, from the Library of Congress, “Be sure to emphasize conveniences for photographing and other processes of copying.”
Dr. Garnett in Essays on Librarianship[355] argues that every first class library should have a department to reproduce books and manuscripts by photography, managed by an expert on permanent salary, with a complete equipment.
Burgoyne, in The Libr. Asso. Record,[356] wishes for public use in large libraries “a room say 10 × 15 with north light, for making photographic copies of prints and plates so that valuable books need not be taken from the premises.”
Music. Small libraries cannot afford a separate room for this use. Such provision as is necessary can be made in the open access rooms or near the desk. Bostwick remarks[357] that music is more valuable for circulation than for reference, sheets of music, and collections, being usually in quarto or small folio size. Duff-Brown advises[358] that it be shelved with uprights only eighteen inches apart, so that volumes or pieces will support each other.