On the other hand an institution or a town may have money given it by a donor who wants a handsome and solid building. The question will then arise, “How compromise between certainty of change, and desire for permanence?” Why not in such case do what has been suggested for college libraries—put up a fine façade, to last a century or more, and use modern methods of light construction for all behind it; thus combining architectural effect with ease of alteration?
The Time to Build
Don’t Build too Soon. All authorities warn against building prematurely.
“It is a risky undertaking for a board to erect a building in the first stage of their enterprise. Better wait until its wants are developed in temporary quarters.”—Wm. F. Poole.[83]
“Don’t build until you have the library, the librarian, and the money.”—J. C. Dana.[84]
“Get your librarian, books, and methods first. Use rented rooms until you know what you want. Almost any rooms can be made to serve as a beginning, and can be so planned that the fixtures and furniture are all available for a new building. Experience will then teach just the kind of building that is needed for that particular town and library.”[85]
Alter Sparingly. In a building given you already occupied, make such not too expensive enlargements or alterations as growth absolutely demands, but take a long look ahead toward rebuilding. With the changes in library methods developing so rapidly, a patched old building soon becomes hopelessly out of date, and clogs progress. Better save up money and cultivate opinion in favor of building anew. Looking a generation ahead, economy alone will demand, at some not distant time, a building in which economy of time and service will be possible. Do not go down to posterity in patched-up old clothes.
But Begin to Prepare Early. As soon as your librarian is selected, your books bought, and your method started, it is never too early to think and talk building. It will take a long time of fixed purpose to work up to a gift or an appropriation. To canvass merits of sites, to study precedents of management, to calculate chances of development, to educate your librarian, to watch and ask about architects, to pick out deliberately the ideal building committee, will occupy many interesting hours at board meetings and consume months or years of preparation. While you are about it, time so taken will allow you to accumulate a lot of information, and to mature your judgment. If you have your librarian get him to look up the files of the library journals, and the annual reports of libraries of your grade and class, and such as are rather ahead of you, who have already realized what your future may be. In these you will pick up here and there many useful hints of experience. If you go to library club meetings and talk with trustees and librarians with similar problems to yours; if you take an occasional leisurely jaunt to well-managed neighboring libraries, you will absorb and be able to digest ideas which a hurried search, after beginning to build, might not elicit just when you want to use them.