It is folly to try to copy except perhaps in a minimum grade library—in embryo or rudimentary form. Perhaps in a very small and remote community, without a trained librarian, with no experienced librarians near, and far from a library commission, it would be safe to ask a local builder or carpenter to duplicate some small building pictured in such a manual as I have suggested, by Miss Marvin and Mr. Eastman. But never except in the smallest grade.
Even among the libraries usually called small, there are differences of site, location, community, state of development, size, methods, aims, funds, prospects of growth, which will distinguish or should distinguish each new building from all other buildings. As soon as a library begins to have a character of its own—and this development comes early in America—its library problem merits and absolutely requires independent study. Every community, every institution, wants to have a library suited exactly to its characteristics, and the library should have a building suited exactly to its character.
“The problem presented to an architect by a library board is always essentially new.”—Mauran.[70]
“Special and local conditions place a new problem before the builder every time.”—O. Bluemner.[71]
Plan Inside First
Librarian and architect should collaborate from the beginning in every interior detail. The exterior should not even be considered until the interior has been entirely mapped out.
This elemental maxim does not appear to have been laid down until the formulation of the “Points of Agreement.” Indeed, the first mistakes in building libraries, and the mistakes still too often made, may be attributed largely to the search for precedents in style, the formulation of the exterior before what it is to hold or express is defined. Most architectural competitions (except those held to dodge responsibility in selecting an architect) arise from an impression on the part of the building committee and the board and community they represent, that the looks of the library building, the effect it makes on the public, is the main thing to secure, not so much the proper housing and handling of the books.
The whole argument of this volume is that a library is a library, a book- and study-workshop or factory; only incidentally an ornament; no more, certainly, than a schoolhouse needs to be. If so, its motives are all utilitarian, to be studied out first of all, thoroughly and faithfully, before a thought is given to exterior conditions, or any details of exterior or interior ornament. This consideration should be reiterated and hammered into the consciousness of all concerned—architect, committee, community.
“Taking into account the practical uses of the modern library, it is readily seen that it needs a building planned from inside and not from without, dictated by convenience rather than taste, no matter how good.”—Fletcher.[72]