“Plan a library so that it may be susceptible of inner development,” says Dr. Garnett.[166]
It is always well to plan your shelving so generously as to leave room everywhere for many years’ growth, and so avoid necessity for early rearrangement.
In small libraries, if the book-rooms are built high enough, provision can be made for a second tier of wooden or metal shelves above that first installed. Better always leave them thus high in the projection, side, or corner devoted to floor bookcases.
With very large libraries interior provisions, except in leaving floors or rooms unoccupied at first, and avoiding rigid partitions, will be difficult.
Limitations. In some libraries it is possible to set a limit for desirable growth. For instance, the faculty of the Episcopal Theological School in Cambridge, Mass., could say that they never should want more than seventy-five scholars or 50,000 volumes.[167] In branch libraries it is usual to decide in advance how many books are needed, and to keep this number the same, by withdrawing as many volumes as are added from time to time. Suburban libraries can reduce the normal limit of growth by arranging with their neighboring urban libraries for a co-operative and interloan system, or may unite with them in some such system of segregating useless books in a common catacomb as has been suggested by President Eliot. (See Fletcher.[168])
File Your Plans. Too often, plans for growth carefully made in planning, have not been preserved. When need comes for them, perhaps often when librarian and trustees have been changed, these provisions are not remembered, or if faintly remembered have been laid away where they cannot be found. The wise way is to file your plans away in the library after using them, and include in the portfolio your provisions for change, both card catalogued so fully that they cannot be missed. Even if conditions have changed before alterations are demanded, the original forecast will be found suggestive in making new plans.
Approaches: Entrances
Where the lot is large enough, there will be room for simple landscape gardening which can add greatly to the attractions and architectural effect of the building, without adding largely to the cost. This is, however, in the architect’s province. As is elsewhere suggested, the park board or institution may assume or share the cost of such embellishment.
Outside Steps. In small buildings, the nearer the main floor gets to the street level the better. If the site is so high that there must be more steps to surmount the basement, a few of these set inside the portico or vestibule will prevent the building from being all stairs in front. In larger buildings, flights of steps, however sightly they are, are a hindrance to entrance or exit, just so many steps to be surmounted in every visit to the library; as bad as an unnecessarily large vestibule, or long corridor—effort and cost wasted. From a library point of view they are all wrong.