“The Building Committee usually has very vague ideas [at first] about size, location or requirements.”—Bluemner.[117]
Once constituted, this committee should relieve the board of minutiæ of planning. If they are wise, they will throw the burden of all inquiry, inspection and initial steps on librarian and architect. If these agree, the committee may take steps to verify their conclusion, but need not be themselves active. Their function is like that of a “struck jury,” to report from time to time to the full board for ratification of their decisions. Perhaps their most difficult function will be to curb the architect in expense and unnecessary ornament.
They will have all they ought to try to do, in deciding various questions which will arise in planning, and in their services as umpires they can earn the thanks of their fellow-citizens.
Free Advice
If you hesitate to pay money for an expert to give special study to all your problems of planning, you can get good advice from many sources in driblets. In the first place, your librarian will naturally contribute all he knows without extra charge. In England, Duff-Brown suggests that at the outset candidates for librarianship should be asked, “Do you possess any practical knowledge of library planning?”[118] This qualification is not often considered in America; and the ordinary library education and experience do not develop it. But your librarian may happen to have served through building problems in some previous position. If such an expert has thus been fortunately secured in advance, his advice will be freely given. Even if not, any fairly good librarian ought to know where to look in books for information, and to gradually formulate his ideas, to be put into such brief and pointed queries as he is justified in propounding to other librarians.
If you have a state library commission, you are allowed to ask counsel from them. In some states the law provides that they shall give expert advice on building, when asked for it. In all states such a custom prevails. If there is no commission in your state, the commission of a neighboring state would doubtless be glad to advise.
To good librarians everywhere, even to those who have become paid experts, you can always look for such gratuitous consideration as does not make too much demand on their time. Their experience and judgment will be generously given free. “If there be any profession in which there is community of ideas,” says Miss Plummer, “it is that of librarianship.”[119] But always remember that librarians whose advice is worth asking, are very busy with the work of their own libraries.
“Information on specific points is freely given by librarians, but in the midst of pressing official duties it is often a severe tax on their time. It is also impossible, in the brief space of such a reply, and without learning the resources at command, to give much useful information.”—W. F. Poole.[120]
Boil down your queries, into pointed questions which can be briefly answered. Draw them off in a list, with spaces for answers, which can be filled in and returned without labor of copying, and enclose a stamped return envelope. So will you not “ride a free horse to death,” and will preserve your adviser fresh for further usefulness.