Bound Newspapers. These require different storage. Small libraries will have to keep what they get, as they keep atlases and other folios. Growing libraries which have fireproof vaults will want to keep valuable local files there. Larger libraries with many newspapers must settle just how to keep them. It is not wise, even not possible, to set such heavy folios on end; they must be kept flat on the shelves. At first, economy may require using plain wooden shelves of special measurements, laying two or three folios on their sides on each shelf. But if there is much use of the papers, handling them in this way is difficult for readers and injurious to the folios. As soon as money can be spared, proper conservation and convenience require metallic roller shelves, which specialists will furnish. Those in the Massachusetts State Library have been found very satisfactory.
Champneys[373] advises “very rough and ready storage; special rooms with open racks; magazines around the walls, newspapers in the center.”
Special Collections. “Large libraries are apt to receive gifts, to be kept apart, either from direction or policy.”—(Winsor.[374]) “A large library never has enough rooms for them.”—(Poole.[375]) Fletcher[376] speaks of the numerous gifts to libraries to buy books in some special department, giving a list of eighty-two subjects of such benefactions, with the names of recipient libraries, summarized from Lane and Bolton’s Harvard Bibliographical Contributions. The Library of Congress Report of 1901[377] gives a list of over one hundred and fifty subjects for separate rooms. Duff-Brown[378] mentions many English special collections.
Where the donations or bequests are generous, it is customary to set aside separate rooms named for the donor, to books thus given. As such libraries are not often for popular reading, but are used mainly by special students, they may be assigned to upper floors. Gratitude suggests that they be treated more ornately than the stack, or the general reading rooms, and in such suites, indeed, there is opportunity for an artistic architect to get noble effects without extravagant expenditure. Wall shelving is appropriate, or even alcoves, for their idea is like that of private or club libraries. Floor cases or special stacks of less severe plainness than must be used elsewhere, are needed as the collections become so large as to require close packing.
The local librarian can tell how many such rooms are needed for the collections already set aside, but how many to anticipate in building is hard for anyone to say. Rooms or floors may be reserved, and marked “unassigned,” but experience shows that such spare spaces are usually wanted for some growth before the new building is completed.
Information. In small libraries there is some attendant at the general delivery desk who can answer miscellaneous questions. In larger libraries, this duty is often assigned to one of the staff occupying a separate desk near the delivery or the public catalog, or supervising the reading room. In large libraries the Providence example is good, where a counter on one side of the large delivery hall is set aside for this use, with its special collection of reference books handy. Only in very large buildings is a separate room necessary and even then it will generally be better to use a small room near the vestibule, or a nook, or niche or counter, wherever most convenient for the public to inquire and where it interferes least with other uses.
Conversation. Strict quiet is so necessary in reading rooms, and talking has to be discouraged so much in most of the building, that a large library ought to have some place when staff or visitors can be allowed a chance to talk when they must. Corridors are usually free from restraint, but it is not often possible to find seats there, or secure privacy. Vestibules and lobbies, however, are never needed for reading, and even if used for exhibitions, can allow more or less comfortable seats, so arranged in window nooks or recesses as to afford quiet corners for conversation. The crossing of corridors, or room under a dome (if such an architectural misfortune happens) can be utilized for this purpose; indeed, any vacant spaces on the floor plans, such as abound in many buildings, can be used for exhibition, decoration, information, conversation, even perhaps for smoking,—any diversions outside of reading which readers might like.
Miss Marvin[379] wants, even in small libraries, “a room in which conversation may be allowed, for the use of committees and for adults who meet at the library by appointment.”