stack, you must have iron or steel. There are, of course, many advantages
in metal when you have to come to it, though it is more costly. It saves
a certain amount of space; it does not obstruct light or ventilation so
much as thicker material; it is more fireproof; shelves are more easily
moved.

Metal in stacks is universal in larger libraries in America, so is
wood in small libraries. In England wood seems much more used in large
libraries than with us.

Hard wood is not necessary for shelving, the cheaper kinds of soft wood
will do, and are easier set. No backing is necessary in any form of book
case, except as a brace, or for appearance, or against a brick or stone
wall.

“Use no paint, but varnish and rub thoroughly.”—_Poole._[260]

“Few village libraries need spend money for steel shelving. It costs
twice as much as oak; four or five times as much as some woods. Wooden
cases are movable, steel not; with wood you can shift and add. You would
not prefer steel in your home.... For libraries of less than 30,000
volumes, wood is better.”—_Eastman._[261]

In planning small buildings do not let manufacturers lead you into
the expense of putting in metallic shelving or fixtures. Wood answers
every need as well, and often better, and is much cheaper. Miss Marvin
says,[262] “No stack should be included in a building costing under
$20,000.” I should put the limit higher, and say “No metallic stack
is either necessary or desirable while wooden wall shelving and floor
shelving will hold the books in the library.”

=Ledges.= In the early wooden shelving for libraries, ledges, “counter
ledges,” so called from their being the height of an ordinary “counter,”
were considered essential. Dewey[263] says: “These have a double use.
They give a greatly needed shelf on which readers may lay books for
consultation or while reaching others, and for the pages in getting and
putting back books.”

These ledges do not appear so much now in floor-cases or stacks. They
still survive, however, in wall-shelving.

But they served serious needs in handling books and have been seriously
missed since they disappeared from use. See an article on a proposed
substitute in stacks, under the title “Carrel,” p. 286, later. This
feature might also be used with wooden floor-cases when lighted by “true
stack windows.”

=Labels=, =Pins=, see articles in Library Notes.[264]

=Head-room.= It is best not to build floor-shelving, even in low rooms,
quite up to the ceiling, but to leave some room over the tops of the
books on the top shelf for free ventilation. But Dewey said at the 1887
Conference, “Why not leave it out—use all space for shelving, with
artificial ventilation?” This might apply to the head-room usually left
at the top of stack rooms. But how about heat? And in most libraries
there is no effective artificial ventilation or forced draft. And in many
rooms outside the stack, it will not be necessary to shelve quite up to
the roof.

=Shelves High or Low.= The rule is, as stated, 7½ feet in height. In
many old libraries, and in a few newer ones, higher cases are used, in
order not to waste upper space in a high room, wherever this space is
not needed for ventilation or diffused light. This is very unfortunate
in inspecting or handling the books. To overcome the difficulty of
seeing and getting at the highest shelves, various forms of steps or
step ladders, or base steps and high handles on the uprights are in use
which can be investigated and adopted when occasion requires, as it never
should arise in a new building. If such shelving is inherited, or must be
used, it would be best to use these shelves, too high to reach by hand,
for storing sets of books or magazines rarely wanted. Or a gallery can be
built half way up to avoid the awkward use of ladders.

As books to be inspected are best nearly opposite the eye of a reader
standing or sitting, live books would better not be stored on lower
shelves in any open-access cases. These shelves nearest the floor might
be used, therefore, for similar sets not often needed.

Miss Marvin[265] advises uniform height for wall-shelving all over the
building.

Low bookcases, “dwarf bookcases,” both in wall-shelving or floor cases,
are often used, for different reasons, especially to serve as partitions,
and have not the disadvantages of cases too high. In floor-cases, the top
can be used as a convenient ledge. In this form, low cases can be set
anywhere on the floor without seriously obstructing light, ventilation,
or supervision, and low cases can be used against the wall when high-set
windows are needed to throw light further across a room.

=Unusual Shapes or Sizes of Books.= Minimos, (sizes under the ordinary
duodecimos) are so unusual that they can be shelved at the ordinary
intervals; and if a set or lot of such small books come together, movable
shelves can be closed together, without much waste of depth (or by
doubling back, with no waste).

Folios and quartos occur in all libraries, in the smallest as books of
reference, like dictionaries and atlases; in larger libraries they may
come anywhere. Formerly, the lower shelves in all cases were made wider,
with a ledge above, but this made the aisles so much wider than was
necessary for shoulder room above, that ledges are not now much used in
floor-shelving or stacks. Instead, special shelving is provided not far
off on each floor, and slips or dummies put on the shelves to indicate
where the larger volumes ought to come in the regular classification, and
where they can be found when wanted.

This special shelving is often put along the walls, but in late stacks
I have found it convenient at both ends of each story. The necessary
ledge can be widened without much sacrifice of space, into a shelf at
table height, which can be put to many purposes, part of it at one end
being cut into to give room for the stack stairs, which usually rob
either books or users of more room elsewhere. In other rooms, with
wooden shelving, there is almost always a convenient recess or end,
where quarto and folio shelving can be put without crowding the other
cases. Indeed, when designing a library building, one thing to watch for
is, where such shelving can be stowed away near at hand, with the most
economy of space. In floor-cases, wooden or metal, occasional large books
can be laid across two adjoining shelves.

As to dimensions, Mr. Poole’s recommendations in 1876[266] still hold
good: a ledge about 34 inches high, with two shelves below, 18 and 16
inches high for folios, 16 inches deep, and as many shelves as the case
will allow above, 12 inches high and 10½ inches deep. Burgoyne says,[267]
21 inches high for folios, 13 high for quartos. These are extreme. Dewey
recommends 12 × 10 inches for quartos; for folios just double octavo
measurement; large folios to be laid on their sides.[268]

If movable shelving is installed, it will be possible to shelve the
exceptional books upright or flat, as their size and character requires.

Burgoyne[269] advises padding flat folio shelves. The British Museum uses
cowhide; other libraries, canton flannel (bad) with falls.

Elephant folios will require special roller shelves.

Shelves in Reading Rooms

“The books most used should be stored around the walls of the
reading-rooms.”—(_Miss Marvin._[270]) This has been a common custom,
but Mr. Dana has suggested that such shelving is out of place in
reading-rooms. So H. T. Hare, in 8 The Lib. Asso. Record:[271] “The
placing of books around the walls wastes floor space otherwise available
for readers.” In this opinion I concur,[272] for the double reason that
it bars out just so many readers, and also it necessitates movement
which interferes with serious reading. As to the former objection,
take a room 30 × 40 with a perimeter of 140 feet, less say 10 feet for
doors, 130 feet net: If this is shelved all around, the shelving with
the usual ledge, and the three feet space in front of it needed for
access, inspection and passing, four feet in all, will take up 456 square
feet, out of a total area of 1200, nearly two-fifths. Without the wall
shelving, the room would hold tables for that many more readers—the use
for which it is intended. As to the latter consideration, to get at the
books every attendant fetching or returning or cleaning them, every
reader consulting them, has to pass before or beside or close back of
some other reader who is trying to abstract himself at a desk. If stored
somewhere else in floor shelving or in a stack close by, the books would
not take up more space, would be more accessible, and less in the way.

If a serious reading room can open directly into an open-shelf floor of a
stack, no wall-shelving will be necessary.

The second objection would, of course, not apply so much to rooms for
light reading where more or less motion and noise are expected, and less
serious study is usual.

=Class and Study Rooms.= Here wall-shelving for reference books
permanently or class books temporarily required, and sometimes floor
shelving also, or a combination of wall-shelving with occasional
projecting cases, like shallow alcoves, opposite good light, will be
required. The purpose of each room defines its needs in arrangement and
shelving, as also in staff-rooms and all special rooms. In libraries of
sufficient size, each such room should have telephone connection with the
staff, and if possible separate lifts or corridor railway service.

Wall-Shelving

The earliest book storage was in cupboards or alcoves, the latest is in
floor cases, but the persistent form between and even now is that of
shelving around the walls of rooms. Mr. Dana and I object to it around
reading rooms, but it now prevails, and perhaps it will still prevail
even there. Certainly it will always be serviceable in most of the
rooms of a small or large library. It was formerly continued even in
combination with floor-cases or stacks, but it is vanishing from such
book rooms to maintain its position sturdily wherever floors are not for
shelves, but for tables.

In this form, the old-fashioned shelf-ledge survives, with folio or
quarto shelving, or sometimes cupboards or bins below, and narrower
octavo shelving above. The ledge is found serviceable in temporary
examination of books and for resting them in transit.

    “Every available foot of wall space should be utilized
    for shelving, between the windows and under the
    windows.”—_Marvin._[273] [But not unless light comes from the
    other side. See below. And where there is steam heat, the space
    under the windows is best for radiators.]

Wall-shelving ought always to be opposite and not next to windows,
because direct light in the eyes blinds the reader so that he cannot
distinguish the books. But if light comes from both sides of the room,
both sides can have wall cases.

=Closed Cases.= In private libraries and in some rare book collections in
public libraries, bookcases have locked sliding doors, either glazed or
with strong wire mesh (for ventilation), too small a mesh to slip books
through.

It is better to back wall-shelving with wood whenever placed against
brick or stone walls, to protect the books from damp and stain.

I have known buildings where the architect put a dado of expensive wood
around rooms where wall-shelving was to be put up at once or was sure to
come soon. This was, of course, a willful waste, as plain sheathing, to
serve as a back for the shelving, would have been far better.

Floor-Cases

Floor-cases, as we use them, first appeared apparently in Leyden about
A.D. 1600.[274] Their use in America can be traced to the pressure for
space in the old libraries, just before the birth of the stack, which is
only floor-cases built up into stories. As the term “floor-case” is used,
it covers all bookcases set out from the wall across the floors, usually
in parallel rows perpendicular to the windows, but sometimes radial or
irregular. The cases are always double, back to back, their dimensions in
each front being just those of wall-cases. The backs are usually open for
light and ventilation, but are sometimes wired or wainscoted with wood.
If backs are not used in floor-cases, some bracing is needed to make them
rigid. The aisles between vary in width from three feet for service to
six feet for open access, though service is possible in narrower spaces
than three feet, and open access, with good light, does not absolutely
require six. It is recommended by the authorities that cases should not
exceed fifteen feet in length. Whenever longer rows are wanted, cross
aisles at about that interval should interrupt, so that an attendant or
reader should not have to walk too far if he needs to get quickly to the
other side of a case.

Radial Cases

“In small libraries and branches, supervision is ensured by
placing floor-cases as radii of a semi-circle whose centre is the
desk.”—_Bostwick._[275]

Duff-Brown[276] says that this method of shelving secures oversight and
ease of working.

The advantages and disadvantages of this arrangement are well summed up
by Eastman,[277] who thinks it of doubtful value.

In small libraries, when set symmetrically in a true semi-circle, radial
or concentric cases certainly have a pleasing effect. The building costs
more, either in semi-circular or octagonal form, than in rectangular
(more in stone or brick than in wood), and there is certainly waste of
space in the widening of the wedge-shaped intervals, which, however, can
be partially utilized by tables or short intervening floor-cases at their
widest part.

This radial shelving has invariably, I believe, been built on the rear
of the building. In many lots it has occurred to me that putting it
in front, or on one side toward a street, could be made an agreeable
feature, and would do more than any other thing could do toward
attracting passers-by, and thus “advertising” the library far more
effectively than many publicity schemes recently suggested.

As to supervision, I have seen in a recent discussion the reminder that
one person blocks the narrow end toward the desk, and effectively hides
disorder, mutilation, or theft beyond.

Sometimes the projection from the building is rectangular, and the
shelving concentric, an arrangement likely to cast shadows. In some
American libraries long rows of slanting floor-cases, not true radii,
point toward the desk. So good a librarian as Mr. Wellman of Springfield,
has adopted this arrangement in a large rectangular room. See also the
Law Library at Rochester, N. Y. But does not this arrangement block
light rather than facilitate its penetration into the room to the lowest
shelves? I should doubt whether the advantage in supervision would
counterbalance this interference and the waste of space. Champneys[278]
(an architect) thinks there may be danger of “overestimating police
methods.” It seems to me that in sizeable rectangular rooms, supervised
entrance and exit at the desk, with rectangular arrangement of the
shelves either perpendicular to the deskline or even athwart the room,
thus trusting the public, would be better.

In small libraries, as in branches, this arrangement is worth
considering, but should not be adopted, it seems to me, without
very careful balancing of arguments _pro_ and _con_. Economy in
construction and space and difficulties in enlargement are against; many
considerations of cheerfulness and usefulness are in its favor. Where the
library is so small, however, that only three or four floor-cases will
hold all its stock of books, these in a rectangular projection back of
the desk, will give most of the effect of the radial form, rather cheaper.

Librarians who have operated both forms could give points to any one in
doubt, and many floor plans, English as well as American, with many
interior views, are accessible to show different arrangements.

If adopted, it seems to me that the semi-circular plan with true radii,
is better than the octagonal or rectangular walls, with obliquely placed
floor cases. These may be arranged for good supervision, but their slant
disturbs one’s sense of symmetry. Besides, the basement beneath may be
devoted to a class or lecture room, for which such a semi-circular shape
gives good light and cheerful effect.

The semi-circular plan has been adopted for alcove rooms in many places,
such as the Library of Parliament at Ottawa, Princeton University, and so
on, but these do not have radiating cases and need not be discussed here.

Shelf Capacity

To calculate shelf capacity, it has been usual to take ten volumes to
a running foot, a figure which has been verified in some libraries.
But books vary in thickness in different kinds of literature, and the
exigencies of growth require gaps to be left in closely-classified
libraries, at the end of each subject. These facts have tended to vary
estimates, which do not now agree. In “Library Rooms and Building,” I
said,[279] “For these reasons, it is prudent to calculate about eight
volumes to a foot for octavos and under, and still less, say five volumes
to the foot, for reference books, law books, medical books, and other
bulky literature.” I have seen no reason since to change these figures
for estimates, though planners should bear in mind the different classes
and sizes of books to be stored in each room or on each case.

The English authorities still set the average number of volumes to a
linear shelf foot rather higher, eight and a half to nine and a half for
lending libraries or fiction shelves. See also, “Stack Capacity.”

The Poole Plan

This seems to be the best place to allude to the scheme which Dr. Poole
proposed as an alternative of the stack. As Fletcher says, the principal
objection to the stack plan was as to opportunities for readers to get at
the books on the shelves. To place readers and books in close contact,
Dr. Poole proposed dividing a building mainly into large rooms, in each
of which readers should have tables near the windows, while opposite the
windows the inner portion of the room should have floor-cases filled with
some special class of books. He got the chance to embody this idea in
the building of the Newberry Library of Chicago. As far as I know this
plan has not been adopted elsewhere as a whole, but every large library
since built has included rooms arranged more or less on this plan, which
is indeed the idea of the department library in a college; or special
rooms, such as Art and Patents, in a public library. So far as Dr. Poole
advocated his plan he furthered library efficiency and should deserve
credit and remembrance.

“In the Providence Public Library, for instance, two-fifths of the books
are shelved outside of the stack.”—_Foster._[280]

But the stack plan has “won out” as a system, and has established itself
as a factor in modern American library building. Further changes,
developments and improvements are doubtless coming, but so far as
administration and architecture are concerned, the stack must be reckoned
as the distinctive difference between libraries and other buildings.

See description and criticism of the Poole plan, with vindication of the
stack system, in B. R. Green’s article in the Library Journal.[281]

Dr. Poole was a sturdy fighter in his day, but he was an excellent,
practical librarian. If he had lived to see the stack as now improved,
and had also seen its combination with the department library or special
library in large buildings, I think he would have conceded the merits of
the new system.

Stacks

=Generally.= These have been adopted in this country, in nearly all
libraries which have got beyond the size where floor cases will serve.
They come into use with us much earlier in the growth of a library than
in England, where they seem not so much in favor.

The notion of the stack was first suggested by the modern revival in
America, about 1850, of the floor-case system, exemplified two hundred
years before in the Leyden University Library. The first modern mention
of this system I can find is Winsor’s description (1876)[282] of the
arrangement of his new Roxbury branch of the Boston Public Library. In
his description of the floor-cases, then only floor-cases, he suggested
the idea of providing for growth another story of superincumbent cases,
apparently of wood, with “dumb-waiters,” and “spiral stairs.” In 1877,
Winsor outlined plans for a similar shelving of several stories with iron
framework and iron floors.[283] About this time (Winsor left the Boston
Public Library and went to Harvard as librarian in 1877), the first
metallic stack (with wooden shelves) was developed and installed in the
addition to the Harvard library building. The idea seems due to Winsor,
the practical embodiment of it in full stack form to the architects
Ware and Van Brunt. The latter described it soon after in the Library
Journal,[284] saying, “I am in part responsible for it.”

This pregnant idea, which, as developed, has done more to change library
administration and library architecture than any other device, was
evidently born in the brains of a librarian as a result of his thought
and experiments, and developed into practicability by good architects, as
all great problems of library building should be worked out. The original
stack contained all essential ideas, but great improvements in details
have since then been effected by librarians, architects, and constructors.

Stacks were at first stoutly opposed by many librarians. As described
by Fletcher,[285] “The stack, as usually built, consists of a series of
iron bookcases [_floor cases_] running from bottom to top of a high room
divided at intervals of about seven feet [7½] by light [_iron_] openwork
or glass floors [_decks_]. The stack undoubtedly offers the most compact
storage of books with great ease of access to every part.” He then
enumerates the objections to the stack, the principal of which he thinks
is, “little or no provision can be made for the access of readers to the
shelves, the idea of the stack being that of a place to keep the books
when not in use.”

Since the first stack was installed at Harvard, remarkably serviceable
even then as a new idea, some of our most inventive genius has been
constantly at work in trying to perfect the advantages of the system,
and overcome its acknowledged defects. Construction, ventilation,
heating, lighting, communications, ease of operation, have been gradually
improved, and recently Dr. Poole’s and Mr. Fletcher’s principal
objection, difficulty of use by readers, has been so greatly overcome
that a later chapter has been devoted to this subject. There are several
good patent stacks in the market, which deserve study and a chance to
submit bids in every new building project, large or small.

The best method of planning is for the librarian to calculate how many
volumes he will have to provide for, and how large a stack he needs
(floor area, and number of “decks”); to lay out, with the assistance
of the architect, a floor plan for one story, with the number and
width of gangways he wants, and a specification of stairways, lifts,
folio-shelving, and other peculiarities.

It is better not to wait for working drawings and specifications for
main building, or even for the stack shell (or building), but to ask
for two bids for a stack of size described, one for the cheapest form
and material each maker can supply, and another for the best form he
would recommend, with his cheapest price for that. This alternative
is suggested, because each make claims certain advantages over the
other, which might overbalance a difference in price. The invitation
to bid should reserve the right “to reject any bid for cause,” and
the final decision should be reserved for the building committee,
under recommendation of librarian and architect. The considerations
for determination can be: cost, strength, lightness, compactness,
adjustability, cleanliness (including lack of projections to catch dust);
convenience of stairs, lifts, floors; details of heating and lighting;
and pleasing design.

After the bid has been assigned, and before the makers have begun on
construction, I advise calling their expert into consultation, and asking
him if he can suggest any change or improvement in any point which will
increase the usefulness of the stack, without increasing its cost. There
is such a keen competition between stack builders, that any of them would
welcome such a conference, in the hope of getting ideas from librarian or
architect which might help him improve his patent.

The stack thus bid for is to be self-supporting, deriving its solidity
from its own uprights, without depending in any degree on the shell, with
which the architect will only cover it and protect it from the weather.

=Location.= A stack may be installed inside the building; for instance,
all along the rear,[286] or side or front. A small stack is often a
feature of a large department room. But generally it occupies an ell or
wing of the building, of light construction, projecting from the rear, or
from one side.

Where the building must face a noisy street there seems to be no reason
why the stack, rather than reading rooms, should not be located there.
Why could it not be designed, even if “true stack windows” would make it
look like an organ front, as a distinctive architectural feature?

“The stack may be as refreshing a problem for the hard-witted architect
to struggle with as he is liable to meet. It may be that the reading
rooms will be within, shut off from every noise, and the stack arranged
along the exterior.”—_Russell Sturgis._[287]

The reading room is now often put just over the stack, as a top-story,
separated from it by a solid floor, but connected with it by service
tubes, telephones and lifts. But in colleges, is it not better to use
such a location for seminar rooms, and in many libraries could it not be
used as part of an exhibition and special library or special study floor?

=The Stack Shell.= That is to say, the addition in which the stack
is housed. As has been said, it usually projects from the rear (but
sometimes from the side) of the main building, as an ell or wing. It
can be of lighter, simpler and plainer construction than the rest, for
it needs no other strength than is necessary to support its own walls
and roof. Indeed, it has not yet been the victim of architectural
ostentation. On the exterior, true stack windows usually run up and down
the whole height, although they may be interrupted by cross sections at
the level of the floors or decks, or rather just above them.

From recent experiments I have made in a stack, I am led to think that
here, as elsewhere, top light from windows is ten times more valuable for
penetration than bottom light, hence such a cross-section of wall, about
a foot wide, if it has any binding power, strengthens the wall, gives
space inside for heating pipes, or looks better, would not abstract any
illumination from the interior. Perhaps, however, the piers do not need
such binding. That is a question for the architect, and depends largely
on their construction. If they are re-enforced by iron or steel T-beams,
the piers need not be massive or be strengthened otherwise.

Some authorities (Champneys,[288] for instance) recommend solid floors
every three decks, as guard against spread of fire, but this extra
expense, not needed for support, seems to me unnecessary as protection.

The material of stacks must be iron, or better, steel, to support so much
weight. The construction, indeed, is much like that of a “sky scraper,”
whose steel frame stands alone, without help from the walls.

=Use by Readers.= It does not seem either possible or desirable to plan
for continuous use of any space in stacks by readers. The temperature
both in summer and winter is usually not so equable as in other rooms.
The main object of the stack, which is book storage, is just so much
frustrated by surrender of shelf space to readers. But there is much
inconvenience in excluding them entirely.

It is a hindrance to investigation to have to make inquiries, or
selections, through the medium of an application at a desk. A large
number of serious readers want to glance at all the books bearing on the
point they are investigating, often to “taste” books by dipping into them
here and there; and to make choice directly from the shelves, of books
they want to examine more thoroughly or copy from, to be carried to a
public or private reading room and used there undisturbed at leisure.
They want free access to the stack for ten minutes only at a time, but
they want it badly. See Fletcher.[289]

“It is fortunate for those who have the use of a library if they
can be admitted to the shelves and select their books by actual
examination.”—_Cutter._[290]

For this, several devices have been used. One is to leave the space in
stacks next to windows for tables and chairs, to be used by readers. “Or
alcoves on one side, as in Iowa College.”—(_Marvin._[291]) A variation
of this takes the form of “cubicles,” little glassed-in rooms next the
windows, as in the new Harvard Law School stack, or as proposed for the
Harvard University Library. But before using this form generally, it
would be better to calculate, first, how much space this will abstract
from the storage capacity of the stack; second, how much it affects the
penetration of daylight into the stack; third, how often any one reader
will want to use any one section of the library so long as to make this
arrangement worth while; fifth, the expense of construction and provision
of equivalent stack room elsewhere; and sixth, the problems of heating
and ventilation, for readers who require reading-room conditions.

Another favorite device is to shorten the outer ends of ranges of
shelves, say by one three-foot section, in every other case on every
floor, where a tiny desk can be set into the range, with a chair or stool
underneath for the use of a reader. This furnishes room for reading but
_pro tanto_ less space for books.

=Open Access Stacks.= Can wider aisles be left in stacks so that readers
may stand well back or stoop to inspect books, and pass each other
easily? Yes, stack cases five feet “on centres” will allow fairly free
movement, as this means 3-feet-6-inch or even 3-feet-8-inch aisles. But
no such width could well be allowed as is called for with open-access
floor cases, _i.e._, six feet clear between. The present methods of stack
construction would not apparently lend themselves well to wide spaces on
the ground floor and narrow spaces above, because the uprights would not
directly support each other. A building might have, indeed, two or more
different stacks, one open access for readers, the other close storage
for books, but this seems rather wasteful. Is there no way to provide,
in a stack which will give the maximum storage, some facility for such
inspection and handling as is needed both for staff and readers?

=A Suggestion.= In reading “Clark’s Use of Books,” I came across an old
expedient of mediæval days which will give a good name for the device
I had already thought of. (See next section.) His quotation[292] is as
follows:—

“In the north Syde, the Cloister was all fynely glazed. And in every
wyndowe iii Pewes or Carrels, where every one of the old Monks had his
carrell, severall by himselfe, and there studied upon there books. From
one stanchell of a window to another, and in every one was a deske to
lye their bookes on.” “These were devices to provide a certain amount of
privacy for literary work.”[293]

=Carrels.= While thinking of this conflict between the desired use by
readers and the close storage which is the proper use of a stack, I
tried to find some wasted space which might serve the one use without
infringing upon the other. While searching I noticed that window ledges
were thus wasted. Look through Koch’s floor plans,[294] or any others,
and you will notice that window frames, usually set midway between the
outer and inner surfaces of the wall, were sometimes set flush with
the inner surface, thus leaving outside a window “stool” nearly the
full width of the wall. But why leave it outside where it would be only
useful for pigeon-roosts or flower-boxes, neither strictly necessary?
Why not set the window-frame flush with the outer wall and so leave the
whole ledge inside, both sill and stool? In the Salem Public Library
stack, as the architect saw no structural reason against it, this has
been tried. In each stack window on every floor a thin shelf has been
run across, table high. The setting back allows this shelf to be twelve
inches deep and three feet long without projecting into the aisle, and
without materially interfering with light. Set a stool near and here is
provision, close to the books, and without cutting into the stack, for
just as many choosers of books as there are windows on each floor. When
no readers need them, here is a ledge for attendants to use in assembling
or dispersing books.

This device does not suit permanent reading, for which the stack is
not intended,—but why does it not perfectly meet the needs of casual
inspection, and choice?

It has been gradually tried out. In the John Hay Memorial Library at
Brown, rather narrow window-shelves were tried; then wider sloping desks
at the Episcopal Theological School; and recently, the wider Salem
carrels, where the windows are set quite flush with the exterior of the
piers.

There is still an opportunity for experiment and development. Is such a
shelf better, fixed or hinged? What would be the simplest form of hinging
and fastening? Is it better, in view of its temporary and intermittent
use, to have it at desk height, for a standee? How thin can it be, and
of what wood, cheapest and least liable to splitting? Might not metal
shelves, furnished with the stack, be better, and about as cheap?

As finally improved with these carrels we could bring the whole stack
back to the narrowest intervals consistent with moving books, and thus
avoid resort to underground stacks and sliding cases, until much later.

[Webster’s International Dictionary gives only the spelling “carol,” but
the old records call it “carrell.”]

At Durham, the carrels were 2 feet 9 inches wide. At Gloucester there
were twenty carrels, each 4 feet wide, 6 feet 9 inches high, and 19
inches deep.[295]

The modern Salem Public Library carrel is wider than the one at Durham,
and about as high and deep as those at Gloucester Cathedral.

=Stack Details.= _Dark Interiors_ are discussed elsewhere; having the
library built around a stack, to be lighted by electricity, open to
daylight only by way of the roof, and opening to outer corridors or
rooms on each floor. This is mainly an architectural problem, though its
administrative aspects would have to be considered by the librarian.

_Height._ The height of each stack floor is generally set at seven feet
to seven and a half. I favor seven and a half, of the two, so that a tall
man need not stoop under the deck beams and electric bulbs. In order
to get the ground floor of building and stack coterminous, the lower
story of the stack must correspond with that of the building, which is
not usually higher than ten feet. As it is most convenient to have the
basement floors of stack and building also coterminous, the unusual
height, for this case only, may be accepted, and the inconveniently high
shelves used for some kind of slow or dead books.

It is usual to leave several feet above the top shelves, just under the
roof, for ventilation.

_“Broken” floors_ are used in some libraries, the Massachusetts State
Library, for instance; one stack floor being three and one-half
feet higher and the next one three and one-half feet lower than the
corresponding building floor, on the idea that it is easier to go up or
down half a flight than a whole flight, for anyone wanting to get books.
But isn’t the average the same? In this form, the very great convenience
of moving books by trucks is sacrificed, so that the almost universal
custom is to have the ground floor, and every second floor above, level
in the stack with floors in the building, thus fixing the height of the
latter at fourteen or fifteen feet, except the top floor, which is free,
and the basement, usually determined by other exigencies.

The material used for “decks” may be openwork iron, marble, or more
usually translucent ground glass.

The floor of the stack as well as of the building basement, is generally
cemented, with special provisions for excluding dampness.

_Passages._ Those running lengthwise may be called gangways, those across
between cases, aisles. The number of gangways varies with the size and
use of the stack. Although it might be built without a center gangway,
and have one on each side, or only on one side—it would then be a very
narrow stack—the usual construction is to have a gangway about four
feet wide down the center, and one of less width (just enough to allow
passing around, say two feet,) at each outer end. But if it is desired
to have very close packing, these side gangways may not be necessary. In
building the new Salem stack, Mr. Jones decided that he could so run the
classification of the books from the center around back to the center, in
every aisle, that there would be little need of passing around the outer
ends, and he could omit them and so gain that much more for books.

The center gangway may be any width desired, but should of course be wide
enough to serve as thoroughfare for men, book-trucks, and boxes. Although
four feet seems the average width, it varies from three feet to six feet
in existing libraries. Good, large windows on each floor should light
gangways at the far end.

The length of aisles varies with the width of the stack building, though
limited by the belief that no bookcase should be more than 15 or 18 feet
long, which requires other gangways at that interval. The width of the
aisles has varied. The original Harvard width, 2 feet 4 inches, appears
to be the very narrowest which will allow passage of two persons, or
stooping to the lower shelves; 2 feet 8 inches is very common; 3 feet
is so roomy that the stack becomes convenient for limited open-access;
while 5 feet “on centers” (3′ 6″ or 8″ aisle) is the maximum in stacks at
present.

Many stacks have wide intervals at the sides of the “deck” in each
aisle—so wide as to have to be wired to prevent books falling
through—“for ventilation, diffusion of light, and communication,” but
such wide spaces are not needed for light or ventilation, and are much
handier for dropping pencils than for passing books, so that I prefer
wider decks with small rims for protection, and much narrower spaces
along the cases.

_Stairs._ Stack stairs need not be wide, for they are so short that two
people never need to pass. Two feet wide is enough. When first adopted,
circular stairs were used, as supposed to occupy less space, but they
were found to be inconvenient and dangerous, and since measurement has
shown that straight stairs need occupy no more space, the “cork screws”
have been entirely superseded. Eight-inch risers and 9-inch treads are
recommended by Champneys,[296] who thinks, by the way, 2 feet 4 inches
the right width, iron with rubber treads being the material.

Stairs should be put in wherever they will be most convenient, and where
they interfere least with book storage and passing. One flight certainly
should be next the entrance on each floor, and one flight generally at
the other end. If they be set sideways in the folio shelving there, which
is not always all needed, they seem to interfere least. (See paragraph on
circular or winding stairs.)

_Lifts._ Light lifts for single books, or few books at a time, are needed
for all stacks (See that title, on page 228.) In large libraries and high
stacks, elevators large and strong enough to carry trucks and boxes, are
also necessary. For lifts, hand operation will serve, or electricity; for
freight elevators, some sort of power is better.

Every such carrier should run from basement to top, with opening on every
floor. A speaking tube should run beside it, with mouthpiece also on each
floor.

_Ledges._ (See under Shelving, p. 265.) As a ledge on both sides of
each case would greatly narrow the aisles for passage and diminish the
capacity for storage, these have disappeared from the modern stack.
Their place has been taken in some stacks by sliding shelves (to be
drawn out when wanted), which do not appear to be entirely satisfactory.
But the need for some substitute, for the use of which Dewey speaks,
has suggested ledges for folio shelving on each floor and for the new
device of carrels, which may at least partially replace ledges without
diminishing storage capacity or easy passage.

_Shelves._ The shelving of stacks follows the rules already described
under the title “Shelving,” except as dimensions are varied by the use of
steel, which is less bulky. Movable shelves also allow more variety in
intervals to suit the average size of books in any part of the stack. It
is usual to maintain the 10-inch height for intervals between shelves,
all over the stack, except as thus modified here and there to suit
exigencies and except for folio shelving at the ends (or sides) of each
floor.

Different patents offer much choice in stack shelving. Avoid especially
projections, likely to catch dust or tear clothing or injure books. Test
very carefully all forms of “clutch” or detachable shelves.

=Stack Lighting.= _Natural._ North light is the best, but the choice is
not often open. The location of the stack is determined usually by other
considerations than aspect. Unless it runs along the rear or side of the
main building; if it projects, that is, it will naturally have two sides
lighted, one of which in any location would have to be south or west, and
thus sunny. If wired glass is used as a protection against fire it will
be more or less opaque and thus will temper glare. Shades can, of course,
be used on the worst exposure, and some contrivance can be used, like
that at the Library of Congress, to work all these curtains at once to
save time.

Overhead light will penetrate one glass floor of a stack fairly well, not
more.[297]

“If daylight is on the whole better and more wholesome, as it is
certainly cheaper than electric light, then a well windowed stack room is
better than a dark one.”—_Russell Sturgis._[298]

Light penetrates stack aisles effectively only about twenty feet, hence a
stack lighted on both sides may be forty feet wide, plus width of centre
aisle.

_Artificial._ The best light is, of course, electricity, and here the
expert of the stack to be installed can give valuable advice. The
question of the location of the bulbs, their power, their direction
(transverse or perpendicular), their frequency, their wiring, their
switches, such questions must be determined. As a great deal might depend
on the particular structure of the stack, one bid for the stack, another
for the lighting, with specifications from each bidder, might be invited.

Hand bulbs at the end of cords have not been found satisfactory. Various
devices have been used, but good systems of fixed lights (bulbs with
reflectors and shades), worked well by means of switches, have been
perfected.

_Reflective Colors._ To help diffusion and local effectiveness of both
natural and artificial light, inner walls and the whole stack would
well be painted some agreeable light tint of enamelled paint. This is
a question of taste for the architect, with approval by librarian and
committee.

Stack Windows

As stack windows must be high and narrow, they introduce a new and
imperative architectural feature on the exterior of the stack fronts.
The usual form is a continuous window from foundation to eaves. This
may, however, be broken for a foot up from every floor, by a cross band
of iron or stone, for effect or for any interior convenience, like
continuous hanging of steam pipes, without real diminution of daylight
inside, provided that the windows run quite to the ceiling in each deck,
to give full top light. If the windows are glazed with wire glass, they
will afford some protection from outside fire, and being opaque, would
temper the glare of sunlight. Factory ribbed glass is also used, as both
tempering and intensifying daylight.

_True Windows._ To give full effect the piers between windows should be
only as thick as the depth of the double book cases, sixteen inches,
and directly opposite them. They have only to support themselves and
the roof, as the stack floors are independent and self-supporting.
Re-enforcement with a steel T-beam will render them stiff enough with
sixteen inch width, and even allow flaring from the windows to admit more
light.

With this construction, each window can have the full width of the aisle
it fronts and be so framed and glazed as not to intercept any light, thus
throwing illumination as far as possible down the aisle, with oblique
rays from the side of the window to the other side of the aisle, reaching
both rows of books to the far end.

This I call a true stack window. In looking over modern plans, you will
see that many libraries have them as to position, though the entire
available width is not always used.

If you have Clark’s “Care of Books,” see how true the alcove windows were
in the Queen’s College, Cambridge, library as long ago as A. D. 1472.

_Defective Windows._ In other stacks, you will find windows too short
(even if there is a cross band, it should not be more at the most than
eighteen inches in height, leaving a window on each deck, six feet full
down from the deck above), but oftener windows narrower than the aisle,
giving too little light to reach the inner ends of the cases. There is
no excuse for these. As has been said above, there is no structural need
to build the piers between windows wider than the book cases inside,
and just so much as they encroach upon the windows they commit the
unpardonable sin of darkening the stack.

Many modern plans show this defect.

_False Windows._ By these I mean windows which outside take the gridiron
stack form, but do not come truly and fully opposite every aisle inside.

“The rear elevation of the New York Public Library plainly shows that the
architects wilfully omitted to place a window at the end of each aisle.
All the beauty of the elevation will not make good the want of light in
the lower floors of the stack.”—_Oscar Bluemner._[299]

The falsity of this arrangement, which is found in many modern libraries,
lies in using an exterior scheme which does not meet inside conditions.
The excuse is that sufficient diffused light is provided for the whole
stack. But if this is true (which I cannot concede), any other equal
window area could be used in any other form, which would not give outer
promise of inward excellence. They are only a sham, and can therefore be
called false stack windows.

=Heating.= The best form developed for stacks is by hot water or steam
pipes along the walls just above the floor of each story clear of the
books, with coils in the windows. Overhead pipes are very bad, as they
concentrate heat at the top of each story, where it is most oppressive to
those walking or working below.

=Ventilation.= There should be an air space above the top shelves in a
stack. Good ventilation can be provided there by end windows and through
the side windows. Some writers have advised sealed windows so as to be
dust proof. In that case some system of forced draft would have to be
installed.

The ventilation of a stack, where use by staff and public is only
intermittent, is perhaps not so important as that of reading rooms
constantly crowded, but the open construction and height of the stack
differentiate the problem rather than avoid it.

=Underground.= In England, Burgoyne says[300] four stories is the rule.
But in America, every library builds its stack, in all dimensions,
according to its wants and space. Four-story stacks are common, but by no
means the limit.

The impending exigencies of storage have not only brought suggestions of
dark stacks in the interior of a building, but they have already carried
stacks under ground. Even the Bodleian Library in England has installed
a two-story subterranean stack, mechanically lighted and ventilated,
under its front lawn. Plans are on foot for stacks many floors below
ground-level, to be lighted and aired by electricity. See p. 222.

=Upward.= Ten “decks” is the maximum height now, but why is it not
possible to build further up into the air before we burrow under ground?
Are there any structural difficulties? Would it cost more to have a
“sky-scraper” stack than a dungeon?

It is a question how underground cases will affect the books. It is
claimed that forced draft will avert the evils of dampness, but Dr.
Thwaites reports that he has found trouble from mould deposited on the
backs of books as the warmer air from the surface above comes into
contact with the cooler walls of the cellar. Would not books packed in
sliding cases, away from the moving air, be more apt to develop inside
rot and insects?

It does not appear to me that cellars for book storage have got beyond
experimental stage. Some years of test seem needed to prove their perfect
availability.

=Stack Towers.= B. R. Green says[301] “the stack might be in the center,
and rise from the roof as a tower. It would be a simple thing to make
a stack of twenty or more stories.” Why not? and why not so rise from
an ell, as well as from the center? Why not build it as a sky-scraper,
any number of stories upward, supporting itself, with a shell plastered
on the exterior? The structural objections would seem no greater in a
stack than an office building. The operating objections are surely no
weightier going up than going down. The daylight would be better, the
dampness less. It might be easier to flood cellars than towers, in case
of fire, but the certainty of water is even a worse foe to books than the
possibilities of fire.

Why is not here a chance to develop a new type of architectural beauty?
If towers are fine features in churches and abbeys, why not in libraries?
Before digging catacombs for our books, why not set our inventive
faculties on hanging gardens of literature reached by elevators like the
levels of the Eiffel Tower?

=Capacity.= Various ways of calculating capacity have been suggested, but
most of them disregard the fact that stacks vary in measurement, and only
two whose interior dimensions are exactly alike can be safely compared.

Capacity of an average stack can be roughly calculated at twenty volumes
to a square foot on each deck. Thus a 30 × 40 stack, three stories high,
will hold about 72,000 vols.

I prefer to calculate the capacity of every new stack independently, when
planning it.

Taking folio shelving separately and adding its figures in later, I
take one floor by itself. It has so many double cases, such and such
length, on each side of the central gangway. One case 15 or 18 feet long,
multiplied by 2 for the two sides, and 7 or 8 for such shelves as the
librarian thinks he can use, then multiplied by 8 volumes to each foot,
will give the “practical capacity” in volumes for octavos and duodecimos.
Multiply by the number of cases on both sides, plus your calculation for
folios, and you have the capacity of that deck. Multiply again by number
of decks, and you have the practical capacity of the stack.

If you wish to get the “full capacity,” as it is reported in many plans,
make your volume-multiplier ten instead of eight, or add twenty-five per
cent to your first calculation, which amounts to the same thing. But
eight to the foot is practically full capacity for closely classified
libraries, where frequent gaps must be left for growth, at the end of
each subject.

Sliding Cases

We can wisely borrow from England the “sliding presses” which Dr. Richard
Garnett brought to the attention of the Library Association of the United
Kingdom at its annual meeting of 1891, having previously described them
in Dewey’s Library Notes and elsewhere in 1887.

Adapted from the Bethnal Green library in 1886, they were put on trial in
the British Museum in 1887, and have since been in operation, regarded
apparently as an invention quite as valuable as the stack appears to
us. “I think enough has been said,” to quote Dr. Garnett’s words, “to
convince librarians of the expediency of taking the sliding-press, or
some analogous contrivance, into account in plans for the enlargement of
old libraries, or the construction of new ones.”

The British Museum press is described as “an additional bookcase hung
in the air from beams or rods projecting in front of the bookcase it is
desired to enlarge, working by rollers running on metal ribs, and so
suspended as not to touch the ground anywhere.” In other words, it is a
movable bookcase parallel to a fixed case, and sliding to and from it by
wheels above. It may be distinctively called a hanging case or press. It
is better suited to the arrangement of aisles and construction of floors
in the British Museum than to most American libraries, and so far as I
know has not been copied here.

[See illustration in Library Notes,[302] and also in Burgoyne.[303]]

Another double press used at the Museum is called by Dr. Garnett the
pivot press. It is apparently a second case, kept front to front close
to the fixed case and swung out from it when wanted, by a door-motion
hinged on a perpendicular pivot; overhung, I gather, at the Museum, but
elsewhere running by wheels on metal semi-circular tracks laid on or
in the floor. Such were early experiments in Trinity College, Dublin,
twenty-five years ago. These might be called folding bookcases. They have
not yet been copied in America.

A third kind of movable bookcase, which may more properly be called
the sliding case, is used in the Patent Office Library, London. This
apparently also swings from the top. Duff-Brown[304] describes it: “These
presses are swung closely side by side, and drawn out, one at a time, as
required.” He does not say drawn out endwise, however.

This idea is developed in The Librarian[305] by James Lymburn, who
suggests “a store-room of any length, 22 feet wide by 35 feet high, in
three stories, lighted from the roof through iron grating floors; with
center passages of 9 feet, and sliding cases 6 feet long, closely packed
in on each side.” He calculates that such a room 40 feet long would hold
100,000 volumes; its advantages being close storage and shelter from dust
and sunlight.

See for illustration, Champneys.[306]

Jenner, in the Library Chronicle,[307] claims for the sliding case these
merits: Cheapness, as compared with enlarging the building; possibility
of gradual installation as needed; nearness to other shelves in a
classification; absence of obstacle to light(?) or motion.

I have also received from a dealer in Oxford, England, a small pamphlet
hinting at rather than describing, a room laid out after Lymburn’s idea.
The pamphlet calculates it will save about half the space taken by stack
storage. These cases, and Mr. Lymburn’s, are evidently double.

See also H. Woodbine in The Library Association Record.[308]

_Per contra_, H. M. Mayhew says in The Library,[309] “The drawback of the
ordinary sliding or hanging or extension case is the difficulty of moving
so great a weight whenever one book is wanted.”

I cannot figure out much from these English descriptions about problems
of mechanism, repairs, lighting, or cleaning.

In America, the general idea of sliding cases has been discussed since
Dr. Garnett’s description of the British Museum device in Library Notes,
and since Mr. Gladstone called attention to it in the Nineteenth Century
of March, 1890.

Mr. Gladstone describes what he calls these “book cemeteries” thus, as he
has seen the “tentative and initial processes”:—

“The masses represented by filled bookcases are set one in front of the
other, and in order that access may be had as required, they are set on
trams inserted in the floor (which must be a strong one), and wheeled off
and on as occasion requires.”

The masses which he thinks ought first “be selected for interment” are
Hansard’s Debates, the Gentleman’s Magazine, and the Annual Register.

So far as I know only two trials of this idea have been made here;
several years ago by Dr. Little at Bowdoin College, more recently by Mr.
Lane at Harvard University. Both of these are wooden single cases, side
by side, pulled out by the end, and locked or lockable. Both slide, not
hang.

Mr. Lane has now a line of twenty-three in a row, sliding on ball-bearing
wheels at the bottom, which in turn run on rails countersunk in the
floor. At the top, the cases are held erect and guided, but not
supported, by small wheels along the sides of a T-rail. He uses his
cases entirely for rare books in an exhibition room on the ground floor,
and finds them very satisfactory for the purpose, although he utters
a warning that provision should be made for free access to all the
mechanism, which occasionally needs repair.

Dr. Little submitted a paper describing his cases to the A. L. Institute
at its New York meeting in 1911. By reference to a photographic view
accompanying I see that he has a double-decker,—two stories of five
single wooden cases each; each case “about six feet high and three feet
long.” “These cases can be made of either wood or metal, for either
octavos or quartos, supplied with either fixed or movable shelves.” [At
Harvard the middle shelf is fixed as a brace, the others are movable.]
“They must be mounted _at the center of the base_ on small ball-bearing
trucks which run on metal rails sunk in the floor. Their tops are at the
same time guided and kept securely in place by a slot and a T-iron,
the friction against which is reduced to a minimum by rollers, placed
horizontally. If properly constructed and placed upon level rails, a
slight pull with one hand will bring one forth. The increased storage is
estimated at 100 per cent.... We also have the Patent Office Gazette on
six wooden sliding cases like these, on either side of the door of the
room in which they are stored.... This method of storage is especially
economical in case a depository library desires to keep its sheep-bound
set of Congressional Documents as a unit, arranged by their serial
number.... The cost of these cases and their installation varies greatly
with the material, finish and location. My first cost less than $15
each, my last about twice that amount.”

I suppose Dr. Little means this for the cost of each separate bookcase,
fully equipped and mounted. Mr. Lane’s figures I have not been able to
put my hands on.

So far for the statement of facts. I must confess to having approached
the subject with some prejudice against the mechanism of these cases,
founded on an experience of sliding doors in dwelling houses, which slide
or not, as they feel like it, and whose machinery is most difficult to
get at and repair. But machinery can be got under control by mechanics. I
yield my prejudices in view of the evident advantages of this system, and
am prepared to make definite suggestions as to its use in future repairs
or building in this country.

In alterations of those architectural extravagances which have wasted
so much perpendicular capacity in high rooms and corridors, I see a way
to use the style of cases experimented on by Dr. Little and Mr. Lane,
rather than any of the English styles. Either as a single story along a
wall anywhere, or in the double story style, swung out anywhere on the
vacant floor of any room or any unnecessarily wide corridor, there will
be relief in the storage of any books not required for open access or
frequent reference;—as Dr. Little says, “for compact storage of less used
books.”

In planning new buildings I hardly think it would be necessary to set
up such cases at first, except perhaps in the case of rare books as at
Harvard, where locked cases and protection from sunlight were wanted,
with infrequent access; or in equipping rooms for rapidly growing sets,
such as Congressional or State Documents, Patent Office Reports, sets
of periodicals or publications of societies, or any similar sets whose
titles and volume numbers can be labelled on the ends of the cases; or
for “dead” books. The Oxford pamphlet sketches a room somewhat after the
“Poole plan,” equipped with tables and chairs toward the windows and a
row of sliding cases along the blind wall opposite the window light. This
seems to me good for many departments.

But except in rooms evidently adapted to such treatment, I would not
install sliding shelves anywhere, but would most certainly leave space,
in a perfectly dry basement if nowhere else, for possible future
installation whenever need may arise.

One reason for this postponement is this: that several details must be
studied, experimented on, and perfected before fully equipped rooms of
this kind can be considered as tried out and permanently satisfactory.
Lymburn’s scheme seems good, but the plans presented by Champneys and the
dealers do not work out well on examination as regards space, light or
handling. I suggest as problems to be investigated,—

    Smooth and sure working of the mechanism.
    Easy access to top and rear for repairs.
    Access for cleaning and ventilation.
    Incidence of weight (this is not even on floors as in a stack;
      but is moving, as on bridges).
    Lighting (most important) on each face of each case.
    Floors sure to remain true.
    Width of center aisles for all emergencies.

See Bookworms, p. 222.

PART III

READERS’ ROOMS

Reading Generally

F. B. Perkins[310] divides reading into three classes: Entertainment,
Acquisition of knowledge, Authorship. This epitomizes our American
division of reading rooms.

What I shall call the light-reading room will provide for all who drop
in at a library to pass a quiet, restful, recreative half hour, a very
large proportion of readers. They are attracted by the lighter magazines,
the illustrated weeklies and monthlies, and books into which they can dip
pleasantly for a few moments. This is generally known as the periodical
room.

The serious reading room, usually called _the_ reading room, is intended
for such readers as get books from the shelves to study or read earnestly
and long, or are preparing themes, papers, newspaper articles—even (when
there is slender provision of separate study rooms) where they are
writing books.

I would add a fourth use of a library—perhaps the commonest—as it helps
all other classes, that is, what we call reference use. (In England where
the reference library and its reading room seem to cover all reading of
books in the library as distinguished from magazines and newspapers,
this is called quick or ready reference.) A separate reference room
or separate corner of the reading room near the door holds all the
books to which visitors look for scraps of information, but never read
consecutively.

Serious Reading Room

By this phrase I mean the room for serious readers who want quiet, but
do not need separate rooms. The English seem to call this the reference
room, a name I apply only to their “quick” or “ready reference” room.
Their “reading room” I call in this work periodical room, in which books
for light or “half hour” reading in the library may be shelved.

This main or general reading room is usually on the ground floor in
smaller libraries, but may be relegated to the second or the top, or
indeed to any other convenient floor, accessible by elevators and in good
communication with the stack.

In libraries where there is space for it on the ground floor, it can be
supervised and served from the central delivery desk, but when elsewhere,
it must have a separate desk and service.

In the largest libraries it often occupies a central position and a
circular form. With a lofty open dome above, it is an impressive feature,
but wastes space which might be utilized otherwise, and it is said to be
more or less drafty and hard to heat evenly.

Position at the top as at the New York Public Library, has great
advantage in light without waste of space, or superfluous loftiness. If
over the stack (though the supporting walls have then to be stronger than
usual) it has the advantage of short and straight lines to the books, and
is said to lend itself to enlargement for readers and books _pari passu_.
Good elevator service is a requisite in this form. “I incline more and
more to the reading room on top of the building, especially in a large
city.”—(_Dewey._[311]) So Andrews, at the same Conference. He also said,
“I believe in the single reading room [as compared with the Newberry or
Poole’s plan] in a public library as a saving in trained assistants, and
because it is impossible to classify readers in rooms as you do books.”

“Plain outlines are best. Recesses, alcoves, bay windows and nooks
are difficult of supervision and spoil the public character of a
library.”—_O. Bluemner._[312]

The main requisites of a reading room are quiet, privacy, light, good air
and space.

=Quiet.= This means not only regulations against conversation, but
various physical conditions. For instance, absence of stir or motion;
exclusion of such magazines as are merely looked over with fluttering of
leaves; exclusion from the shelves (if there must be shelves around the
walls) of books frequently wanted by readers and attendants; (reference
books, class books, new books and others inviting frequent examination,
should be put on the side or in a corner near the entrance, concentrating
stir there;) noiseless floors; echoless walls and ceilings; exclusion of
outside noises; no stairs directly into or out of the room; no passage
through to other rooms.

=Privacy.= This requirement can be met by the proper provision and
arrangement of the furniture, which will be further treated under the
head of Tables. The former method was to use almost exclusively large
open tables, seating ten or more, or tables with lengthwise and crosswise
partitions, setting aside bins or stalls like voting booths to shut out
distracting sights. The large plain tables are not now in favor, the
tendency being toward tables for six, four, two, or even one. See floor
plans and interiors of libraries in Koch and elsewhere.

=Light.= Light falling from the left, shaded from the eyes, focussed on
the table in front of the reader on the book he is reading there, or the
paper on which he is writing, is desirable. If the room is lofty, windows
high in the walls, carefully shaded from glare, are out of range of
reader’s eyes. If lower, as most rooms are, the table seats should be so
disposed if possible as to give each reader light from the left.

The question of artificial light is discussed elsewhere. The best of high
lamps for diffused light, of side lights and of hanging lamps to light
readers, is a special study for the architect. As readers have varied
eyesight, individual table lights, adjustable and severally operated are
best on the whole, but the wiring of each table fixes its location so
that it cannot be moved in cleaning or re-spacing. Bulbs hanging about
eight feet from the floor are much used.

=Good Air.= This is as important as it often is unsatisfactory. Bad air
interferes more than anything else with clearness and concentration
of thought. Mr. Ranck of Grand Rapids is now chairman of an A. L. A.
Committee on this subject. He writes me: “Personally, the more I have
looked into it, the more I am convinced that the physiological side
is most difficult, not the mere keeping down the amount of carbon
dioxide. I am inclined to think it will be necessary to make a number
of experimental tests to determine these points.” The report of this
committee will be interesting.

Meanwhile, the best thing to do is to get a report from recent buildings
as to their methods, and the success of each. Evidently the problem
varies with the size and situation of the room and the method of
heating, including heat from artificial light.

If perfect ventilation could be installed, crowded tables would not be
quite so bad.

=Space.= H. T. Hare, an architect, in a recent number of the _Library
Association Record_,[313] writes: “Almost all our public libraries are
too closely packed for comfort, health and movement. A fifty per cent
increase in floor space would not be at all extravagant.”

If there is money to spare, this might be desirable, but unfortunately
few libraries, large or small, have funds enough to allow luxuries. The
spacing of seats must be as close as health and convenience will permit.
It is generally agreed that for serious reading, which may require room
to spread books open and to lay manuscripts beside them, 25 square feet
are ample, 20 square feet sufficient, 16 square feet rather a crowded
minimum, to include chair, table and passage-ways.

As to size, Duff-Brown[314] suggests finding the _daily_ average of
readers and plan for one quarter of this daily attendance at any one time
during the day, as sufficient space to allow.

Reference Room

As already said this is a very useful room, or section of a room; indeed
it might even be put in an anteroom or vestibule, to include such books
as will be used for quick consultation, but never for reading. It should
be for the openest and speediest access. As Spofford specifies,[315]
“It would include encyclopædias, dictionaries, glossaries, etc.,”
or according to Fletcher,[316] “general and special encyclopædias
(such as music, fine arts, mechanics, geography, classical, Biblical,
biographical, etc.)” Dr. E. C. Richardson[317] lays down that “at least a
small selection of the best reference books should be accessible to the
public.”

“Place as little hindrance as may be to the busy man who runs in to
glance at the dictionary, directory, or time-table.”—_Bostwick._[318]

This room need not be as large as either of the other reading rooms, but
it should be most accessible, near the front door, near the desk, near
the catalog. It should have wall shelving for large and small books,
drawn under specifications by the librarian, for just what volumes he
wants to display there. Revolving bookcases are convenient here. This is
especially the place for the old-fashioned ledge, and for a few narrow
tables like those used in front of a catalog case, with small, light
chairs or stools; just as little furniture as would be needed for taking
down a volume at a time to glance at, or to take brief notes from. How
many it should accommodate at once depends on the library and its use. It
will be wanted, in brief visits, by very many of the visitors, down even
to the children of the higher grades of the schools.

Although one of the most important departments of large or small
libraries, it is not the place for high walls or architectural ornament.
It should have especially good light at all points day and evening, for
the type of many reference books is so small as to try the eyesight at
its best.

If there is not space in the building for a separate room, put it, if
possible, in the same room with open-access shelves, or the magazines,
or in a corridor, where there is already some confusion; for the use
of reference books is a distraction to serious reading anywhere near.
If they must be put in the reading room, give the reference books a
stretch of shelving or a corner near the entrance and desk, so that their
consultation will leave serious readers afar off and undisturbed.

Might not a good arrangement of a reference room be on the window side
of the delivery or open-access room, with broad alcoves opposite the
light, and with a good ledge under the windows; or just with floor cases
perpendicular to the windows, spaced wide like open-access shelves, but
having old-fashioned ledges to help consultation of reference books? Here
is opportunity for ingenious planning.

=Standard Library.= Mr. Foster’s plan of a Standard Library room at
Providence has something to commend it from an educational or didactic
point of view, but it would hardly be much missed by the public. In new
buildings where all available space is in demand for more imperative
needs, I doubt if I should include such a room, unless already adopted as
part of the policy of the library. If it is, however, to be included it
should have an architectural dignity—not necessarily splendid—to conform
to its purpose. Why might not this be combined with the trustees’ room?
The bindings of the books would adorn the walls, and make the room a
worthy meeting place of the board at evening, without interfering with
what I imagine is not an eager or crowded use by the public during the
day.

Or, if its object be not quiet reading, but to bring the books
prominently to notice, to exhibit them, why not treat it as an open
access or club room, open to conversation? Would not this further its
primary object, attract visitors, and promote taking these volumes home
or into quiet reading rooms to read?

Light-Reading Rooms

=Half-hour reading.=[319] This is generally called Magazine or Periodical
room in our libraries, but I should include in it some provision for
casual reading of books also. In 1903 I suggested at an Atlantic City
Conference, shelving in such rooms for a class of books every library
owns, but usually scatters under various classifications, although their
common purpose is for episodical or temporary entertainment, such as is
known as “half-hour reading.” On this shelving I advocated placing a good
selection of the best short stories, readable essays, anthologies, brief
poems, humor, and so on, to be read in the room, just as magazines are
used, for such pastime as the reader’s time will afford.

“Three-quarters of the readers are destitute of literary culture, but
need recreation and pastime.”—_Winsor._[320]

My suggestion then evoked interest, but I do not know that it has
been acted on anywhere. I renew it here as a use for wall shelving in
periodical rooms for new buildings, and in concentrating there all
recreative reading. In this light-reading room a certain amount of
movement and noise must be expected, which will not much annoy the
readers there. The coming and going of visitors whose stay must be brief,
the handling of magazines or books, the turning of pages, the rustling of
newspapers, perhaps the murmurs of children over illustrations, are to be
expected. Here such wall shelving as has been suggested would not be out
of place.

=Periodicals.= Here are kept such few local and metropolitan newspapers
as are taken by the average library. Magazines and weeklies either
lie freely on large flat tables or are kept for open access in wooden
pigeon-holes or pockets against the walls without intervention of any
attendant, or are kept behind a counter to be issued by a special
attendant on call. Where there are many readers and a large number
of serials, experience has shown that it is better to keep them in
pigeon-holes behind a counter, to be delivered by an attendant.

“Where not a large number of periodicals is taken, they are usually
placed on tables without a special attendant.”—_Poole._[321]

The furniture of the room and its arrangement will depend on which system
is to be used in the library. This should be settled in advance.

The chairs used here should be strong, but light; rubber-tipped so as to
be noiseless when moved. Except in looking at illustrated papers, readers
may prefer to hold octavo magazines, or books, in their hands, turning
their chairs back or side to the light, in the easiest posture. Arm
chairs for such use would be appropriate.

It is not supposed to be necessary to allow so much floor space for each
reader in such rooms. Duff-Brown[322] considers 12 square feet enough in
England, but our usage in America is 16 square feet, which is better for
elbow room, passage and ventilation.

“In rooms for magazine reading, there should be more room for chairs than
tables.”—_Champneys._[323] This seems good advice, unless the periodicals
are to be laid loose on the tables.

It is often the custom to put reviews and other serious magazines in the
reading room, leaving all the popular or recreative serials in the room
for light reading.

There are frequent articles in English library journals about arrangement
of magazines, but I find nothing among them which seems to improve on
methods generally understood here. See Duff-Brown.[324]

“A really effective system, of displaying periodicals is about as
difficult to find as a first folio Shakespeare.”—_Burgoyne._[325]

The few newspapers taken are generally mounted on sticks and hung from
racks, though I have seen them left loose on tables.

Newspaper Room

In English libraries this department seems prominent in all buildings,
large and small. “The English newsroom is generally the largest and most
convenient room in the building.” In America, a few newspapers are kept
in the light-reading room, but only large public libraries have separate
rooms for newspapers. Where a considerable collection is kept, a large
room will be required, with single sloping desks against the walls or
double desks on the floor, with or without stools; or sometimes the
papers are hung on the hooks of racks, and used at tables (with chairs)
close by.

The newspaper room may be put in the basement with a separate entrance,
as its use and supervision are generally separate from other uses of the
library.

“Newspaper and magazine rooms should not be too large; two 30 × 50
are much less noisy than one 50 × 60, less draughty and easier to
ventilate.”—_Burgoyne._[326]

The opinion expressed by Dr. Poole in the United States Public Library
Report of 1876,[327] “It is thought in some libraries that the expense
of newspapers could be better applied to some other purposes,” seems to
be echoed in recent discussions in England. See The Library Assistant,
Vol. 4.[328] A moderate view advanced at one meeting was this: “It is
exceedingly doubtful whether a newsroom is justified in towns with a
population under 45,000.” The matter is well summed up in the Library
Association Record.[329] Reading the debates, and weighing the arguments
_pro_ and _con_, does not lead one to recommend planners of American
libraries to provide more space for newspapers than it is customary to
allow with us: a rack or two in small and medium libraries, for local
papers and one or two metropolitan journals, but no separate newspaper
rooms except in the public libraries of large cities. Even there, I
imagine their use is more for reference and information than it seems to
be in England. Champneys[330] calls the newspaper reader “a professional
loafer.”

However, “In libraries where the newspaper room is somewhat inaccessible,
there is little annoyance from the tramp element. Branch library reading
rooms in New York City, put on the third story for lack of sufficient
space below, are almost entirely free from tramps. People willing to
climb to that story really want to read.”—_Bostwick._[331]

This fact is worth noting in planning large libraries.

Children’s Room

This department, now considered a cardinal necessity in all libraries
great or small, is a development of the last generation. No special
rooms were devoted to this purpose before 1890. “Today it is tending
to be a practically separate library, with its own books, circulation,
catalogues, statistics and staff.”—(_Bostwick._[332]) So great a success
has it become, that a library without special provision for children
would now be a curiosity.

In the smallest libraries, with only one room, separate tables and
shelves are set aside for children. As libraries grow in grade, separate
rooms are provided with special attendants as well. Here the shelving,
tables and chairs are lower, often of two or three suitable sizes.

The idea at the outset was to segregate children so that their motion
and chatter should not annoy adults who were using the library; now the
notion is entirely educational, to catch and interest young children,
so that they will continue to use the library as they grow up. There
are even separate rooms for smaller tots, on the kindergarten idea of
attracting them with pictures before they begin to read. This purpose is
furthered by having suitable pictures on the walls. Rooms are also fitted
up for small audiences to whom stories are read or told.

Although children are only expected for a few hours every day, they are
apt to swarm at those hours. The room or rooms so used ought to be at
the same time homelike, cozy, attractive, and also well ventilated. The
ground floor is the best place, though the basement has often to be
used, in default of room above, and children have been sent up one flight
of stairs, because they are better able to climb than adults. The stairs
and hand rails should in this case conform to children’s stature. If they
can be shut off from the reading room by sound-proof partitions, quiet is
preserved for the readers. Children are apt to be restless and murmurous
if not noisy. “Children do not mind noise and crowding; adults do.” In
large buildings separate entrances are provided for children.

Special reference rooms are even provided in some libraries, and in the
largest buildings teachers’ rooms adjoin, so as to bring all school
influences into the same suite and system.

Bostwick[333] advises (why?) that shelving should be confined to the
walls if possible.

In planning, the librarian should determine the scheme he will adopt for
treating this problem, and a room or portion of a room or a suite of
rooms should be assigned and fitted after the latest and most approved
manner.

Discussion is still active, and new methods are developed yearly with
constantly improving conveniences.

In England this movement appears to be viewed with some distrust.
Duff-Brown[334] speaks of “the epidemic raging in the United States.” But
he devotes four paragraphs to it, and Champneys[335] three pages. The
latter, quoting Clay’s School Buildings, gives an interesting formula of
heights of seats and tables for children of different ages, though he
thinks it difficult to get the small children to use low tables and the
reverse. He also specifies the need of low hand rails for children on
stairs; even two rails, one for adults, one for children.

See Marvin, pp. 12, 17, 18; Dana, Lib. Pr., 167; Bostwick, 78, 85; L. J.
1897, p. 181; Conf. 19, 28; 10 P. L. 346.

Women’s Rooms

The separation of boys and girls, usually by a low hand rail, is favored
in children’s rooms, by obvious parallelism with school customs, but the
separation of men and women into different rooms has never been common in
America, although separate tables are sometimes assigned to “the use of
ladies.” But no “woman’s room” is a necessity to consider in planning.
In England it has been different. Duff-Brown[336] reports eighty women’s
rooms among over four hundred public libraries there, but he pronounces
them unnecessary. Champneys[337] also thinks them “an indifferent
success.” “Experience has proved that a separate room for women is
unnecessary.”—(_Burgoyne._[338]) If that is the verdict where they have
been extensively tried, there seems to be no good precedent for wasting
space on them in American libraries.

In various discussions of this subject, it has been stated that women
sometimes use tables set aside for them, but not special rooms, and that
such rooms require closer supervision, because the few who use them are
more apt to mutilate or deface books and periodicals than any other class
of readers.

The Blind

See Bostwick’s chapter on “Libraries for the Blind.”[339]

“Books for the blind are handled by a public library in much the same
way as those for the seeing. It is common to have a separate department
or suite of rooms, but this is not necessary.... Owing to the size of
the books, shelving for them is of unusual depth.... Free access to the
shelves is as valuable to a blind reader as to one who has the use of his
eyes.”

“The question of space will arise in many places. No space could,
however, be devoted to a more humane and valuable purpose than the
storage of books for the blind, and every encouragement and support
should be given to the movement.”—_Duff-Brown._[340]

Because of the space required, very careful consideration should be given
by the building committee as to how much space the conditions of their
community will allow them to give to such special wants. If they decide
to have rooms for the blind, these ought to be, if possible, near an
entrance from the street level. In regard to dimensions, shelving, etc.,
the librarian would best inquire of some library of the same grade and
class. Experience is the best teacher, and the local treatment of this
subject must be defined and specially planned for.

Special Rooms

Small libraries have no space for differentiation. One room, or a few
rooms, must be divided by rails, low bookcases, or glass partitions, into
the functions they can manage to separate. But as a library enlarges,
and grows to other stories, it finds many advantages in segregating
different classes of books and readers, thus approaching Dr. Poole’s plan
of separate reading rooms, or the department plan in universities. Even
before any such activities have grown enough to occupy a full room, any
space in a new plan which can be spared may well be marked “unassigned.”

Some of these rooms are used in all public libraries of all sizes except
the smallest; some of them are desirable in many other classes of
libraries.

These rooms, in about the order of need, as libraries grow, are,—

    (1) Local Literature,
    (2) Study,
    (3) Classes,
    (4) Patents, Science, Useful Arts,
    (5) Public Documents,
    (6) Art: Prints,
    (7) Music,
    (8) Maps,
    (9) Education,
    (10) Lectures,
    (11) Exhibitions,
    (12) Pamphlets,
    (13) Bound Serials,
    (14) Special Collections,
    (15) Information,
    (16) Conversation,
    (17) Unassigned.

These rooms, except Information, do not demand ground-floor space,
but can be assigned to upper floors. In a large library, they will be
accessible by elevators anywhere; in a two-story library, or even in
one of three stories with easy flights of stairs, the fewer readers who
want to use them may be asked to climb rather than the larger throngs of
general readers or borrowers of books.

=Local Literature.= I take up this first, because even a very small
library may begin a collection, if only part of a shelf can be given
to it. “In a small place,” says Bostwick,[341] “the library may go
as far in such directions as its resources warrant, and even without
financial ability, it may stimulate sufficient interest to secure
volunteer helpers.” If you have or can get to look at Duff-Brown,[342]
see his specification of the books, etc., a library may include in a
“local collection.” Everything local in the way of printed matter, is
his summary. See a series of articles in The Library Asso. Rec., Vol. 7,
1905, pp. 1 to 30, and Vol. 13, p. 268. This is an English example well
worth following.

A local collection may include, besides books and pamphlets, maps,
prints, even pictures, for which hanging space will be needed on the
walls. Indeed, if a local antiquarian society can be drawn in as
assistant handlers and curators, such a collection may assume a museum
phase, and may need low bookcases for books, with ledges above for models
and busts, cupboards for pamphlets and small objects, even glass cases
for relics. It should have floor space for visitors before all these
cases, and a large table and chairs for committee meetings. It is one
of the rooms which might be shared by the trustees where accommodations
are restricted. There is ample opportunity for special planning in such
a room, in accordance with the policies of the administration of the
library.

=Study Rooms.= Here again the smallest libraries cannot spare special
facilities. All users must share the limited space available. But
when they get beyond the one-room or one-floor stage, some corners or
intervals between other departments, or ends of corridors, or mezzanine
rooms, might be found for private rooms, to be used for individuals,
either alone or with one scribe or typewriter. Even in small towns,
there are cultivated citizens, or professional people, or teachers, or
reporters, even authors, who wish to use books, and prepare manuscripts
alone, and can safely be trusted to do so without supervision. How great
a service such rooms might do in any American community, I do not think
is generally recognized.

“It is the library alone that can furnish inventors, investigators,
and students of all kinds the opportunity to forestall wasteful
effort.”—_Bostwick._[343]

For individuals, such rooms can be small, and low, of almost any form,
simply furnished with one small table and two chairs, with shelves at one
side or end for a few books, and one window, not necessarily large, but
giving good light on the table.

“A large room with stalls, or a series of small rooms with shelves, for
students making protracted investigations and needing to keep books
several days.”—_Winsor._[344]

Duff-Brown, however, thinks that students’ rooms only establish another
“privileged class,” and make further demands upon the staff for service
and oversight.

=Rooms for Classes.= In close connection with the last idea (indeed rooms
might be interchanged for use either several and collective), are the
many classes, clubs, associations, etc., in the community so closely
connected with the use of books that the library ought to offer them
whatever hospitality its space can afford.

“The modern public library is the helpful friend of scientific, art,
and historical societies, of the educational labor organizations, of
city improvement organizations, of teachers’ clubs, parents’ societies,
and women’s clubs. At the library should be rooms suitable for their
gatherings.”

“One of the most important things in a library of any size is a room
where a class can be met by their teacher, and not interfere with the
regular work of the library.”—_C. A. Cutter._[345]

“Study clubs, reading circles, extension teaching, and other allied
agents.”—_Dewey._

See liberal and well-lighted group of “seminar rooms” in the Wisconsin
State Historical Society plans.—_Adams._[346]

In a paper by Arthur E. Bostwick (which I happened upon in an English
periodical[347]), there is this interesting account of the various
uses of rooms in branch libraries at St. Louis: “Each has an assembly
room _and one or more club rooms_, which are loaned free to any
organizations desiring to use them for intellectual advancement, or for
legitimate forms of recreation, such as women’s clubs, chess clubs,
groups of working men, socialists, classes in literature and philosophy,
self-culture, and reading circles, art or handicraft societies, athletic
clubs, dramatic clubs, military organizations, ecclesiastical bodies,
the Boy Scouts, high school alumni, English classes for immigrants, D.
A. R., etc.” I imagine that most trustees would draw the line far short
of the “etc.,” but the list indicates to what length libraries are going
on social and sociological lines, for which provision must be made in
building.

Rooms for this purpose may be plainly painted and plainly furnished, but
should be adequately high, especially well ventilated and made cheerful
by color and light. How to define their sizes would be a matter for the
local librarian to guess at, with his line of activities well mapped out.
Where so much work beyond mere reading is to be done, there should be
at least one sizable lecture room (the basement would do), one or more
large rooms divisible by screens into several smaller rooms, and as many
smaller rooms with sound-proof provisions as space would allow.

=Patents, Science, Useful Arts.= In industrial communities a room or
suite of rooms for the literature of science and the useful arts,
including sets of English and American patent specifications, will be
found useful. Winsor[348] emphasized the necessity of providing for rapid
growth in this department, at that time “150 large volumes a year.”

A small library may properly shelve such scientific books as would
especially benefit its working constituency, but could not think of
patent reports. This is a luxury for the large libraries only, with
present and prospective space to spare. Floor space is necessary for
readers, with tables large and plentiful enough for many large volumes
and plates outspread. Shelf room is needed around the walls or in
alcoves, on the ground floor for the octavos, above for the larger books.
Where the stories of the building have been already made lofty (it would
not be necessary to have them lofty for this room alone), a favorite form
has recurred to the first American “typical plan,” to have around the
walls tiers of alcoves and galleries combined, about the only place this
discredited arrangement survives.

Where the height of stories does not invite this form, such rooms can
well take a frequent law library phase, with tables near front windows
and combinations of wall shelving and wall cases opposite the windows,
narrow alcoves as it were, for book storage, but not for readers.

Here seems an excellent opportunity to install some form of the new
sliding cases, say a row of such cases along an inner blind wall, with
tables and chairs toward the windows.

=Public Documents.= “Pub. Docs.” are a burden on all libraries. They
are the first gift to small village libraries, the accumulating gifts
to growing libraries, the incubus on large libraries, and yet all feel
obliged to keep at least part of them. Some of the national and state
publications are very valuable, when distributed throughout the classes
to which they belong; but of the large mass of records which ought to be
preserved somewhere, what shall be retained, and where shall it be kept?

“Do not waste time, in the early days of the library, in securing public
documents, save a few of purely local value. Take them if offered and
store them.”—_Dana._[349]

See the sensible suggestions of Bostwick:[350] “Government documents
are a bugbear to many libraries.... We have some getting more than they
want, others that have to buy them. The library of moderate size, not a
repository, is inclined to disregard all government publications, which
is a pity. The large library will shelve everything.”

A serious problem in planning is where to stow this superfluity without
interfering with essentials.

In an old house closets, upper stories and dry cellars can be fitted
with fixed wooden shelving (for the sets are of uniform or similar
sizes), some for octavos, some for quartos. New buildings may have a
room or rooms assigned almost anywhere out of the way, even in the
center of cellar or attic, with only artificial light. If the original
or duplicates of the most important volumes are shelved under subjects
elsewhere, the use of pub. docs. will be so infrequent that their
location is a subordinate question.

How much space to assign is a question that depends on the circumstances
and policy of the library; for instance, whether it is keeping United
States, state and foreign government issues; or only one or part of one.
In a small library a closet or an obscure corner will do. In a larger
library, a dry part of the basement or cellar is enough. In a very large
library, wherever space can be best spared.

Here again sliding cases may come into play.

How much space this literature may occupy is indicated in the L. C.
Report of 1901,[351] which states that there were 87,654 volumes under
this head in the Library of Congress at that date, besides 12,442 state
“Session laws.”

=Duplicates.= A room for laying aside duplicates is needed in all
libraries large enough to have them. It needs as much rough wooden wall
or floor shelving as the number or prospective number of duplicates
demands, and can be put in cellar, basement, attic, or in any place not
needed by the more active departments. It is one of the rooms that do
not absolutely need good natural light, because it is not to be used by
readers or the public.

There should, however, be space enough for ready access to the books
by attendants, and light enough for inspection. If there is to be any
attempt made at systematic and continued exchange of duplicates with
other libraries, this space and light will be more needed than if storage
only is required.

As handling, access and inspection may be required at any moment, this
class of books seems hardly adapted to sliding-case shelving.

=Art.= Small libraries cannot spare a separate room for this literature.
But in many buildings in æsthetic communities of no great size, an “Art
Room” is set aside before other extra departments attain the dignity of
separation. Often a suite of rooms is assigned to the ornamental arts,
Art, Prints and Photographs, Architecture, etc. Here, if anywhere, some
elaboration in cases, shelving and furniture, in harmony with the motive,
is excusable. The rooms surely should be most attractive in form and
color. The bindings in themselves of books of these classes are usually
decorative.

An unusual proportion of the shelving should be designed for large
quartos and folios, to be laid flat and handled with care; part of the
shelves, at least, with rollers.

Glazed bookcases preserve valuable books from dust and grime. Sliding
doors leave them accessible. Large tables or desks or sloping ledges,
with specially good light, are needed.

The location of such rooms should be prominent. No space can usually be
spared on the ground floor, but a second floor, with simple, dignified,
easy stairs, is an excellent location, and the top floor superb, as it
allows good top light without interfering with wall space for shelving
and engravings above. Especially is this floor appropriate, if its center
is allotted to an exhibition room on whose walls or in whose cases public
exhibitions of the library’s artistic prints and portfolios can be
occasionally held.

=Prints.= Bostwick[352] says, “A department of the public library that is
increasing in interest, and that may be said to be partly art collection,
partly repository of useful information in pictorial form, is the print
department.... Such collections are of value” (to eight specified classes
of readers).

This use should be considered in planning an art room or suite.

See fine photographic view of the Division of Prints in L. C. Report
1901,[353] which will suggest ideas of arrangement.

=Public Photographing.= “In connection with such a suite, in libraries
where visitors are allowed to make copies, a small room fitted for
photographing, with an adjoining dark room, would be a convenience.
In the largest libraries copies might be made for users at their
cost.”—_Burgoyne._[354]

Bernard R. Green writes me, from the Library of Congress, “Be sure to
emphasize conveniences for photographing and other processes of copying.”

Dr. Garnett in Essays on Librarianship[355] argues that every first class
library should have a department to reproduce books and manuscripts by
photography, managed by an expert on permanent salary, with a complete
equipment.

Burgoyne, in The Libr. Asso. Record,[356] wishes for public use in large
libraries “a room say 10 × 15 with north light, for making photographic
copies of prints and plates so that valuable books need not be taken from
the premises.”

=Music.= Small libraries cannot afford a separate room for this use.
Such provision as is necessary can be made in the open access rooms or
near the desk. Bostwick remarks[357] that music is more valuable for
circulation than for reference, sheets of music, and collections, being
usually in quarto or small folio size. Duff-Brown advises[358] that it
be shelved with uprights only eighteen inches apart, so that volumes or
pieces will support each other.

As the collection assumes an important size, and includes sets of opera
scores and assembled works, it may be given a separate room, or two small
rooms, with special wall shelving. It has become somewhat usual, in large
libraries, to put a piano here for trying scores, and phonographs for
repeating them. When this is done, the room or one of the rooms should,
of course, have perfectly sound-proof partitions, to shut off sound from
other departments.

Provision of some kind must be considered for pianola rolls and
phonographic records.

This department may well be assigned to an upper floor. It should, of
course, provide shelving for the literature of music.

=Maps.= Any small library may have atlases, for which special shelving
must be provided. An economical provision can be made by putting flat
shelving under the table holding the catalog case.

A separate room for this branch of literature, which includes bound
volumes, loose sheets, wall charts, globes, etc., is set aside only in
large libraries. It cannot be expected on the ground floor, but might be
on the same floor with Art, as it requires similar height, arrangement,
light, and access.

Maps are kept in three forms, as in volumes (either coming in atlases, or
bound up by the library) or in loose sheets or on rollers. For volumes,
sliding, flat, and upright shelving will provide suitable stowage.
For sheet maps or charts, large, shallow wooden drawers in dust-proof
cases, sometimes with wooden flaps in front, are usual. Patent metallic
map-cases are better, but more expensive. A high room affords wall space
for such charts as can be read at a distance, and are frequently used.
Wall space from the floor up should be reserved for hanging maps. Andrews
and others recommend Jenkins’ Map Roller. For using maps in any form,
large tables in the centre of the room (trestle tables will do, to be
brought in when wanted), and sloping desks or ledges under the windows,
may be provided.

As sufficient space for this department is often hard to spare, a good
location for it is at the end of a corridor. Here doors can be omitted,
and the corridor space can be taken into the room. The corridor wall
opposite windows is a fine place for hanging maps; the floor of the
corridor, for globes and the like.

See C. W. Andrews,[359] Windsor,[360] Bostwick,[361] Duff-Brown,[362]
Champneys,[363] The Library Assistant, Vol. 8.[364] See also a fine view
of the Library of Congress map room in their 1901 report.[365] To show
how important a department this may become, and what room it may occupy,
take note that the Library of Congress has 2,600 atlases and 57,000 maps
and charts.

=Education.= This is an important subject in large libraries, and may
even demand a separate room in smaller grades where there is much school
work done.

A simple room of moderate size and height, simply furnished, with wall
shelving or floor cases for pedagogic literature will answer all purposes
for teachers, committees and interested citizens.

Its position would best be near the school or children’s department,
using the same entrance.

It might also be used for teachers with classes, for laying out and
sending out books to schools, or for a school reference department.

Indeed, as all Art rooms may properly be grouped together and assigned to
the same floor, all rooms connected with children, schools, teachers, or
education should be shared, or grouped together with a common entrance,
corridor, or stairway.

=Lectures.= There seems to be a difference of opinion in this country as
to the necessity or even the advisability of giving up space to assembly
rooms or lecture rooms.

“In a small building an assembly room is a nuisance,” says Bostwick.[366]
See, however, his enumeration quoted under Rooms for Classes,[367] of the
uses to which an assembly room has been put in a St. Louis branch.

In England, lecture rooms among progressive libraries are considered
essential.[368]

It seems to me that a part of the basement, in all buildings which have
basements, can generally be spared for a fairly large room to be put to a
variety of uses, which even if not directly germane to the use of books,
are proper work for a neighborhood club, which is what the modern small
or branch library is coming to be. A fine room can be made under radial
bookcases.

It is not necessary, or wise to have a sloping floor such as is used
in colleges or public halls; too much height would be wasted by the
slope. Nor need the platform be large or high;—a foot high, enough for
store-room under it, through trap doors, for such extra camp chairs as
are needed for audiences; with enough light, removable tables, and light
chairs for all uses to which the room might be put; a dead white wall
back of the platform, and such arrangements as would allow stereopticon
exhibitions; effective ventilation for a full room, even with the low
ceilings of a basement, and you have provision for many needs of a small
library. In larger buildings larger rooms may be provided, but always
such as could be used in various ways, at different hours of day or night.

Six square feet, Duff-Brown[369] and Champneys[370] consider enough
to allow for every auditor, including seats, gangways and platforms.
Marvin[371] says the same, but does not include platform.

For the use of audiences, while the rest of the library is working, there
should be a separate outside door or wide door into a corridor directly
communicating with the outside.

As such rooms are not so much used for reading, and are not high in the
walls, light fixtures need not be so numerous or powerful.

=Exhibitions.= Where funds are scant, I doubt whether it is best to
provide an art gallery for permanent or occasional exhibitions of
pictures, with the necessary disposition of lights. But in sizable
buildings, a large room can be spared for exhibitions directly or
indirectly connected with books, and such a room can be so fitted up as
to receive busts, statues and pictures presented to the library.

The center of the top floor of the main building offers an excellent
position for a large room for exhibition purposes, with daylight from the
roof. If suitable wall material and covers are provided as background
for pictures, with picture mouldings and with glass cases for the floor,
it is ready for showing specimens of printing or binding, rare books,
manuscripts, or prints and engravings.

As such an apartment would not be used for reading, it may be a common
corridor for many rooms opening around it, which are devoted partly
to exhibition, partly to consultation; for instance, art, music and
maps. Thus arranged, the top floor would segregate many functions which
elsewhere might interfere with the quiet of readers; and would provide
most agreeable conversation facilities.

=Pamphlets.= In many libraries gifts of pamphlets are received, which
cannot be separately catalogued at once. It is sometimes necessary to let
them accumulate until time is found to assort them, decide what to keep
and what to give away, what to bind and what to file in pamphlet boxes.
In small libraries they can be kept temporarily in closets. In large
libraries they often assume such bulk as will fill a room. Their stay in
this form is so temporary that the room assigned can be remote (in the
attic, for instance, of an old house), and very plain, not even finished,
except for such light as will be needed in sorting and such heating as
will keep workers comfortable.

Trestle tables, kitchen chairs, rough fixed wooden wall or floor
shelving, will answer all purposes, and save money for use elsewhere.
When the pamphlets are boxed or made ready for binding, they need not
return here, but may find their places elsewhere in the stack or special
rooms.

=Bound Serials.= Except a few serials which cover only special subjects,
these are usually kept together, for general magazines in use are
somewhat like encyclopædias. They are perhaps more readable, but are
not often used for reading; rather for reference through Poole and other
indexes. In any considerable collection they occupy so much shelf room
that they will soon fill a large room by themselves, and they are so kept
in many libraries. In the Library of Congress there are 123,805 volumes
of bound periodicals, 68,127 of them “general.”[372] If placed in the
stack, the basement is a good assignment for them, for various reasons.
If they are to have a room elsewhere it can be anywhere available;
with wooden floor cases (movable shelves) and plain walls and ceiling
so colored as to reflect light. As they are often heavy and awkward to
handle, and as readers may want to give them a first examination on the
spot, tables at one side of the room and carrels in the windows will
facilitate use.

Sets of society publications are often kept in the same room with these
serials.

=Bound Newspapers.= These require different storage. Small libraries
will have to keep what they get, as they keep atlases and other folios.
Growing libraries which have fireproof vaults will want to keep valuable
local files there. Larger libraries with many newspapers must settle just
how to keep them. It is not wise, even not possible, to set such heavy
folios on end; they must be kept flat on the shelves. At first, economy
may require using plain wooden shelves of special measurements, laying
two or three folios on their sides on each shelf. But if there is much
use of the papers, handling them in this way is difficult for readers
and injurious to the folios. As soon as money can be spared, proper
conservation and convenience require metallic roller shelves, which
specialists will furnish. Those in the Massachusetts State Library have
been found very satisfactory.

Champneys[373] advises “very rough and ready storage; special rooms with
open racks; magazines around the walls, newspapers in the center.”

=Special Collections.= “Large libraries are apt to receive gifts, to be
kept apart, either from direction or policy.”—(_Winsor._[374]) “A large
library never has enough rooms for them.”—(_Poole._[375]) Fletcher[376]
speaks of the numerous gifts to libraries to buy books in some special
department, giving a list of eighty-two subjects of such benefactions,
with the names of recipient libraries, summarized from Lane and Bolton’s
Harvard Bibliographical Contributions. The Library of Congress Report
of 1901[377] gives a list of over one hundred and fifty subjects for
separate rooms. Duff-Brown[378] mentions many English special collections.

Where the donations or bequests are generous, it is customary to set
aside separate rooms named for the donor, to books thus given. As
such libraries are not often for popular reading, but are used mainly
by special students, they may be assigned to upper floors. Gratitude
suggests that they be treated more ornately than the stack, or the
general reading rooms, and in such suites, indeed, there is opportunity
for an artistic architect to get noble effects without extravagant
expenditure. Wall shelving is appropriate, or even alcoves, for their
idea is like that of private or club libraries. Floor cases or special
stacks of less severe plainness than must be used elsewhere, are needed
as the collections become so large as to require close packing.

The local librarian can tell how many such rooms are needed for the
collections already set aside, but how many to anticipate in building
is hard for anyone to say. Rooms or floors may be reserved, and marked
“unassigned,” but experience shows that such spare spaces are usually
wanted for some growth before the new building is completed.

=Information.= In small libraries there is some attendant at the
general delivery desk who can answer miscellaneous questions. In larger
libraries, this duty is often assigned to one of the staff occupying a
separate desk near the delivery or the public catalog, or supervising the
reading room. In large libraries the Providence example is good, where a
counter on one side of the large delivery hall is set aside for this use,
with its special collection of reference books handy. Only in very large
buildings is a separate room necessary and even then it will generally
be better to use a small room near the vestibule, or a nook, or niche or
counter, wherever most convenient for the public to inquire and where it
interferes least with other uses.

=Conversation.= Strict quiet is so necessary in reading rooms, and
talking has to be discouraged so much in most of the building, that a
large library ought to have some place when staff or visitors can be
allowed a chance to talk when they must. Corridors are usually free from
restraint, but it is not often possible to find seats there, or secure
privacy. Vestibules and lobbies, however, are never needed for reading,
and even if used for exhibitions, can allow more or less comfortable
seats, so arranged in window nooks or recesses as to afford quiet corners
for conversation. The crossing of corridors, or room under a dome (if
such an architectural misfortune happens) can be utilized for this
purpose; indeed, any vacant spaces on the floor plans, such as abound
in many buildings, can be used for exhibition, decoration, information,
conversation, even perhaps for smoking,—any diversions outside of reading
which readers might like.

Miss Marvin[379] wants, even in small libraries, “a room in which
conversation may be allowed, for the use of committees and for adults who
meet at the library by appointment.”

“Conversation rooms,” says Champneys,[380] “may certainly be introduced
in large libraries, and their presence has the advantage of being a
continual reminder that conversation is not permitted in the reading
rooms. In small libraries ... the addition of a large room which can be
used for committee meetings, lectures, exhibitions, and a variety of
other purposes, cannot but be recommended.”

In other words, talk can be allowed in lecture or exhibition rooms.

Staff talk is well provided for in any library in the staff work and rest
rooms. Subdued talk about books might be allowed in reference rooms or
open access rooms. This, with freedom to talk in halls and vestibules,
may preclude necessity for a separate conversation room even in large
libraries.

=Unassigned.= Notwithstanding this list of special rooms required,
including most of the uses which can be foreseen, there is always
opportunity in a progressive library, for more space still to be used,
either in enlarging departments, or in establishing new ones. In
planning, the wise way is to include specific assignment of space or
rooms to all existing departments, and such others as seem to be on the
lines of probable development, but also to get more room still, to be
marked “unassigned.” It will be taken up sooner than anyone anticipates.
Indeed, as has been already said, there are many instances, where the
spare space left “unassigned” in planning has been claimed even before
the building is finished.

Instead of having lofty rooms, it is always best to divide the height
of a library into as many floors as possible, making none loftier
than actual use will require for light and ventilation. Never allow
superfluous height of rooms or stories for architectural effect, outside
or inside. Only by watching and limiting waste of space, in breadth,
length or height, can you get the maximum of opportunity out of money
you spend, or be able to get either all the departments you want or
unassigned room additional.

If basement or cellar is not all taken up with your assignment of
departments and rooms, underdrain and line the foundations carefully, and
provide for such future features as duplicates, public documents, or rows
of sliding cases for close packing of less used books.

PART IV

FURNITURE AND EQUIPMENT

I have mentioned these already under different headings, where they
materially affected the size, shape, lighting, or situation of rooms.
I shall not go into an enumeration or description of different outfit,
because there are so many specialists, so many tastes, so many systems
in different libraries, that selection of the latest and best devices
offered by dealers accessible to the librarian is very easy. But a few
general remarks on one or two articles, may properly be included in a
general discussion on planning.

In the first place, never allow the furniture, fixtures or fittings
to be chosen primarily for architectural effect, but for special use
and fitness in every detail. In material, in shape, in hue, have them
harmonize with the surroundings, for in such harmony lies the most
effective and the least expensive beauty. Here, the taste of the
architect can be of the utmost assistance. But, if possible, bar out what
has been called “architectural” furniture, even if money can be spared
for it. Heavy show-pieces, hard to move, hard to use, inconvenient,
uncomfortable, wasteful of space, are an abomination in any library.

As to proportion of expenditure, Duff-Brown[381] allows eighteen per cent
of total cost for fittings and furniture. He suggests, however, that
fittings which are fixtures should be counted as part of the permanent
structure. Perhaps this qualification explains the different estimate of
Champneys,[382] who allows only ten per cent for furniture.

Bostwick[383] also recommends that fixtures be included in the general
contract, and movables (which he specifies) be bought separately. He
makes an excellent suggestion, that where this is done, a piece of the
material to be matched, in its finished form, be sawed in two, and one
piece handed to each contractor, so that the furniture and fixtures will
match exactly. How important this is will be realized at many libraries,
where the tint of fittings meant to match, often “swears.”

Miss Ahern, editor of Public Libraries, writes to me, in answer to an
inquiry:—

“I believe in putting technical equipment outside the lines of library
building and architecture. A builder cannot make it as well as a
specialist in library equipment.”

My experience leads me to endorse her advice most heartily. I would say
further, what she probably modestly refrains from saying, on account
of her business connections, I would get the catalogues of The Library
Bureau, ask and take their advice, and give them the preference where
their prices are as low. I say this (I have not even an acquaintance
with their present management) because theirs was the first attempt to
serve libraries on this line intelligently, and I have understood that
many years of altruistic experiment, advised by good librarians, were
spent before they even met their expenses; so that their services merit a
reward.

Miss Marvin[384] gives a “Typical List of Furniture” for a small
building, with prices ruling in her section at the time she wrote. She
fears, however, that she may have erred toward too great economy, “cheap
furniture being unsightly as well as unprofitable as an investment.”

One matter apparently often forgotten in planning is the matching or
contrasts of color, furniture as well as woodwork, shelving, and walls
and lamp shades. Not only is the general cheer and comfort of the library
secured by harmonious environment, but eyesight is deeply concerned in
soft and soothing effects. Here observation and taste may effect wonders
in planning for both “utilitas” and “venustas.”

Tables

These deserve a separate chapter; they are used everywhere.

“Good, plain, solid,” epitomizes Champneys.[385]

“Use small tables and light chairs instead of the large heavy tables and
‘artistic’ chairs, conformed to the style of the building, but awkward in
use.”—_Fletcher._[386]

“The old style of long tables is now thought cumbersome,” says
Bostwick.[387] This I endorse, though architects prefer large tables in
large rooms, as more in proportion. He advises small, rectangular or
circular tables for not more than six readers each. I doubt the circular
in libraries where space is scant. They waste room.

“Should not be too long, or if double not too narrow.”—_Duff-Brown._[388]

“Tables for four give readers a feeling of privacy.”—_Eastman._

For this reason I rather incline to slightly sloping desks for two, like
school desks, in reading rooms; all facing one way; all with a low back
and sides, with a fillet at the front, to keep books and papers from
falling; with extension slides or trough drawers for open books at each
side of each reader. This form, it seems to me, combines a minimum of
space for desk and passages, with a maximum of convenience and seclusion
for readers. In the hours when the room was not thronged, there would
be a desk to a reader. If the desks were rightly faced and the windows
and lamps well arranged, no reader need have direct rays of light in his
eyes, nor dazzling reflection from his paper.

As regards height of tables and space to a reader, see Eastman,[389]
Marvin,[390] Bostwick,[391] Champneys,[392] Duff-Brown[393] and
Carr.[394] They differ slightly, and each librarian would best experiment
and judge for himself.

The British Museum has a kind of voting booth for each reader, with 4
feet 2 inches width of desk, high back and side screens for privacy.
Cornell has something similar, but most libraries cannot afford so much
space or such provisions for privacy.

Polished tops for tables (glass tops are sometimes inset) promote
cleanliness, but are apt to give dazzling reflections of light.

One general caution echoed by many authorities warns against bottom cross
rails between table legs. The scraping of readers’ feet against them is
noisy, drops mud on the floor, and soon wears down the rails.

Many libraries have umbrella racks at the end of the tables, and here
the owners can certainly have an eye on them. But if a coat room cannot
be provided with an umbrella stand, cannot such a self-locking rack be
placed in a lobby, as is seen in many restaurants?

Umbrellas are damp and unsightly as neighbors, and they occupy space
readers might use.

“Readers’ tables should invariably have hinged flaps for writing, and
slides to be drawn out to enlarge book space.

“There should be standing desks also.”—_Edwards_, Free Town
Libraries.[395]

Perhaps there was a demand by readers for standing desks in England forty
years ago when Edwards wrote, but few people want to stand now in America
while reading or writing. A fixed standing ledge against any vacant
stretch of wall near directories, dictionaries or the like, might be a
convenience.

Chairs

Chairs are an important element in comfort. Strong enough for rough and
constant use they must be. Graceful, or at least not ungainly, they ought
to be and in most libraries they cannot be superfluously large. Indeed,
there are many places where room can be saved by using stools, even fixed
revolving stools. In some places armchairs (simple, not upholstered) will
make readers more comfortable. For instance, in places where they can
take up a book or magazine while reading and lean on the arms. Where a
table is used to lay the book on, armchairs are not necessary, and they
always need more room than plain chairs.

For a small library, the simplest kind of strong, bent-wood chairs
suffice. Wood “saddle” seats, or rattan, are recommended rather than any
upholstery, in larger libraries. To prevent noise, rubber tips to shoe
the legs—the kind that screw in rather than slip on, are recommended.

Where there is no special coat room, hat racks underneath and such
wire coat racks on the back, as are often used on theatre seats, are
conveniences. Mr. Foster has these in the Providence Public Library, but
he tells me they are not much used.

Chairs look better if they match each other, the tables, and the
shelving, in material, style and color.

In planning it is wise after you have decided how many seats you want
in each room, to have the architect sketch a floor plan and draw in
shelving, tables and chairs, allotting to all the space which experience
has taught is required for each reader in each room, as you intend to
run it; and then carefully study the positions of the furniture and the
dimensions of all the passages, checking results by examination of plans
and visits to libraries which you think are satisfactory, until you are
satisfied that you have reached the maximum of convenience with a minimum
waste of space. A few hours’ time spent in this apparently trivial matter
may mean much in ease of administration for years to come.

Delivery Desks

In the very small library, where every expense must be watched, all the
furniture may have to be of common shapes and material, such as can be
bought at the nearest furniture store. But as soon as any necessary
luxury can be afforded, build or buy a specially designed charging and
delivery desk, for this is the center and heart of almost all libraries
of any size or any class. Do not have it built by a local carpenter, but
wait until you can buy it from an experienced cabinet maker, or better,
from a first-class library fittings expert. Study catalogs and plans to
see what comes nearest to your needs and methods. If you find within your
means a model which entirely suits you, get it. But if using of that or
other makes of desks, or trying your own methods, or suggestions of other
librarians, have led you to think that some modifications would suit
better, it will not cost much more to have them made in the style which
otherwise pleases you. Indeed, if your wants are wise, you will find
that a dealer may meet them without extra charge, in the hope that his
desk will thus commend itself to other librarians. Only by this gradual
study put into form by clever librarians, can the ideal desk be gradually
evolved.

See articles in the Library Journal, 19, 368; 21, 324; 22 (Conf.).

See dimensions, Carr, 18 L. J. 225, Duff-Brown 105.

From the foregoing remarks on points of contact between library and
public it will be seen that many of these are localized at a single
point—the loan desk. “This point may be regarded as the heart of a public
circulating library.”—_Bostwick._[396]

“_It may happen that the position and size of this desk may
determine in conspicuous particulars the character of the whole
building._”—_Idem._[397]

Catalog Cases

As the card system has been so universally adopted in America, and worked
out to such standards of size that the most convenient makes, dimensions
and sizes of cases for every grade of library are kept in the market in
all large cities, there is no need of describing them here. But I would
make some suggestions as to how they may influence planning.

Cases for small libraries may not need a special base, but can be used
on any table, flat desk or ledge. As the library grows, it needs more
cases, and a special base, such as all makers furnish, may be wanted.
As cards, like books, are more easily used when they can be seen by the
reader without craning or stooping, their increase is better met by
broadening than by piling up, until wall space fails. In the first form
of base used, it is better to utilize the space under the table, not so
much in the cupboards or open spaces suggested in some catalogs, as in
the upright or flat shelving of the quartos or folios (such as atlases)
not handled so often as to interfere seriously with use of the cards, the
primary purpose of the cases. This space beneath should certainly be put
to some use wherever space is precious.

One form of catalog case frequently used is double-faced, set in the
partition between the delivery room and the cataloguer’s room, the
drawers pulling both ways, so that they can be used alternately in either
room.

In planning, the first thing is to calculate how many cards, drawers
and cases are needed for the number of books now in the library, and
the annual increase probable, for at least ten years ahead; better