A Library Primer (1899)/Chapter VIII

The trustees will be wise if they appoint their librarian before they erect a building, or even select rooms, and leave these matters largely to him. They should not be in haste to build. As a rule it is better to start in temporary quarters, and let the building fund accumulate while trustees and librarian gain experience, and the needs of the library become more definite. Plans should be made with the future enlargement of the building in view; libraries increase more rapidly than is generally supposed.

Rooms of peculiar architecture are not required for the original occupation and organization of a library. The essential requirements are a central location, easy access, ample space, and sufficient light. The library and the reading room should be, if possible, on the same floor. Make the exterior attractive, and the entrance inviting. In arranging the rooms, or building, plan from the first, as already suggested, to permit visitors to go to the books themselves.

A collection of the printed matter on library architecture should be carefully studied by both trustees and librarian before any plans are made. While no specific plan can be recommended that would suit all cases, there are a few general rules that meet with the approval of the library profession as a whole. They maybe thus summed up, following in the main a paper on the subject by C.C. Soule:

"A library building should be planned for library work.

Every library building should be planned especially for the kind of work to be done, and the community to be served.

The interior arrangement ought to be planned before the exterior is considered.

No convenience of arrangement should be sacrificed for mere architectural effect.

The plan should be adapted to probabilities and possibilities of growth and development.

Simplicity of decoration is essential in the working rooms and reading rooms.

The building should be planned with a view to economical administration.

The rooms for public use should be so arranged as to allow complete supervision with the fewest possible attendants.

There should be throughout as much natural light as possible.

Windows should extend up to the ceiling, to light thoroughly the upper part of every room.

Windows in a book room should be placed opposite the intervals between bookcases.

In a circulating library the books most in use should be shelved in floor cases close to the delivery desk.

A space of at least five feet should be left between floor cases. (If the public is excluded, three feet is ample.)

No shelf, in any form of bookcase, should be higher than a person of moderate height can reach without a stepladder.

Shelving for folios and quartos should be provided in every book room.

Straight flights are preferable to circular stairs.

The form of shelving which is growing in favor is the arrangement of floor cases in large rooms with space between the tops of the bookcases and the ceiling for circulation of air and the diffusion of light.

Modern library plans provide accommodations for readers near the books they want to use whatever system of shelving is adopted.

Single shelves should not be more than three feet long, on account of the tendency to sag. Ten inches between shelves, and a depth of eight inches, are good dimensions for ordinary cases. Shelves should be made movable and easily adjustable. Many devices are now in the market for this purpose, several of which are good."

Don't cut up your library with partitions unless you are sure they are absolutely necessary. Leave everything as open as possible. A light rail will keep intruders out of a private corner, and yet will not shut out light, or prevent circulation of air, or take away from the feeling of openness and breadth the library room ought to have.

For interior finish use few horizontal moldings; they make traps for dust. Use such shades at the windows as will permit adjustment for letting in light at top or bottom, or both. The less ornamentation in the furniture the better. A simple pine or white-wood table is more dignified and easier kept clean than a cheaply carved one of oak. But get solid, honestly-made, simple furniture of oak or similar wood, if funds permit. Arm-chairs are not often desirable. They take up much room, are heavy to move, and are not easy to get in and out of at a table. In many cases simple stools on a single iron standard, without a revolving top, fastened to the floor, are more desirable than chairs. The loafer doesn't like them; very few serious students object to them.

A stack room for small libraries is not advisable. Don't crowd your cases close together unless it is absolutely necessary.

An excellent form of wooden case is one seven feet high, with shelves three feet long and seven and a half inches wide, supported on iron pegs. The pegs fit into a series of holes bored one inch apart in the sides of the case, thus making the shelves adjustable. These pegs can be bought in the market in several shapes. The shelves have slots cut in the under side at the ends to hold the projecting ends of the pegs, thus giving no obstructions to the free movement of the books. With some forms of pegs the slots are not needed. The uprights are made of inch and a half stuff, or even inch and an eighth. The shelves are inch stuff, finished to seven-eighths of an inch. The backs are half inch stuff, tongued and grooved and put in horizontally. This case-unit (3' x 7' x 8") may be doubled or trebled, making cases six and nine feet long; or it may be made double-faced. If double-faced, and nine feet long, it will hold about a thousand books of ordinary size when full. It is often well to build several of your cases short and with a single front—wall cases—as they are when in this form more easily adjusted to the growing needs of the library.

A library can never do its best work until its management recognizes the duty and true economy of providing skilled assistants, comfortable quarters, and the best library equipment of fittings and supplies.

For cases, furniture, catalog cases, cards, trays, and labor-saving devices of all kinds, consult the catalog of the Library Bureau.

Very many libraries, even the smallest, find it advantageous to use for book cases what are known as "steel stacks." The demand for these cases has been so great from libraries, large and small, that shelving made from a combination of wood and steel has been very successfully adapted to this use, and at a price within the reach of all libraries. One of the principal advantages in buying such "steel stack" shelving, with parts all interchangeable, is that in the rearrangement of a room, or in moving into a new room or a new building, it can be utilized to advantage, whereas the common wooden book cases very generally cannot.