Miss Marvin gives exterior and interior views and floor plans, with full descriptions of twenty libraries, costing from $2,600 up to $75,000. No one should plan a library of any size without giving her pamphlet a careful reading.
Eastman gives exteriors, interiors and floor plans of twenty-five libraries, ranging in cost from $1,170 to $80,000.
H. B. Adams has twenty-five exteriors, forty interiors and only thirteen floor plans. Bostwick has seven floor plans.
The Massachusetts Public Library Commission Report for 1899 shows one hundred and twenty exteriors, with letter-press giving costs, but no interiors or floor plans.
The Boston Public Library Index to Plans of Library Buildings, second edition 1899, refers to over twelve hundred illustrations in various books, pamphlets and periodicals, of which the largest number are only exteriors, a few are interiors, one hundred and twenty only are floor plans.
There are many exteriors of libraries, usually without interiors or floor plans, published in popular and in architectural periodicals, but very few of them furnish valuable suggestions as to planning. Indeed much plan hunting will rather daze than instruct an investigator. A common defect in plans is the total absence of information about the height of rooms—a vital measurement. Indeed every plan should tell, both the height of each story, floor to floor, and the height of each room, floor to ceiling.
There are many interesting plans, with descriptions, scattered among annual or special library reports, but these have not been indexed together in any one place. If one of the library-schools could compile as a thesis, an index to plans of library buildings in books and magazines, distinguishing between exteriors, interiors, floor plans and letter-press information, and if someone like Mr. Eastman or Miss Marvin could supply comments as a guide through this mass of material, it would be a good thing for the A. L. A. Publishing Board to father. The A. L. A. itself once attempted to get a collection of floor plans and got about a hundred sets as a start, but I believe has never prepared any such card-index of features, with such comments as would make them valuable. I believe the Library Bureau has also a considerable collection of plans.