Others again have rooms fitted more or less cleverly into the body or corners of a general stack. A very convenient location would be a special seminar story over the stack, with both top and side light, which would allow a large number of rooms of any required sizes.
Without the seminar complication, Mr. Patton[40] is perhaps right in saying that the college library presents a simpler problem than the public library, for it has less circulation, and no children to deal with; but with it, especially on a large scale, this is one of the most perplexing puzzles of library planning.
Mr. Patton also suggests[41] that the best location for a college library is one that does not require architectural façades on all sides, and that a slope backwards has advantages. The same may be said of many other kinds of libraries.
In a recent number of the Popular Science Monthly[42] it is suggested that a university might be built in a compact group, with a common façade, as beautiful as possible; offices and lecture rooms to be directly behind this show front; the library occupying a central position further back, flanked by the departments, all connected and all built on “the unit plan” for easy enlargement sideways, endways, up, or down.
In recent projects, there seems to be a tendency toward schemes for a college group, evolved evidently not from the use of the several buildings, but from desire for architectural harmony. Those interested in the library should strive to have it omitted from any such general scheme, and relegated to any modest position in the background, where its details could be worked out without any such exterior bias.
The position of the general reading room is another major problem. In a small college it can be put, as a single room or a suite, almost anywhere within easy reach, near the main entrance, and preferably on the main floor. In a large university a one-story ground floor room in the center of the building, just back of the main entrance, not too high (lest the roof cut off too much light from the lower windows of the wings opening on the courtyard), would seem to be a good location.
Administration rooms, as in other libraries, should be central, well lighted, suitably collocated, and quiet. The delivery desk would better be separate from the reading room, unless it could be combined with the service desk in that room, and so placed toward the entrance end or side as not to let the stir and noise disturb readers.
Where to put the catalog cases adjoining both departments, with good light, is usually another puzzle inviting study.