Page:Essays in librarianship and bibliography.djvu/283

 Rh required by extensive structural additions to the existing edifice.

I may assume that all present have seen, or will see, the photographs of the Museum sliding-press exhibited to the Conference, with the accompanying description. I may therefore be very brief in my account of it here, and simply characterise it as an additional bookcase hung in the air from beams or rods projecting in front of the bookcase which it is desired to enlarge, provided with handles for moving it backwards and forwards, working by rollers running on metal ribs projecting laterally from the above-mentioned beams or rods, and so suspended from these ribs as absolutely not to touch the ground anywhere. These are its essential characteristics, without which it would be indeed an additional book-press, but not a hanging-press or sliding-press. In recommending this system of additional accommodation, I by no means wish to insist upon this special form as the only one adapted for the necessities of a library. I have no doubt that in very many libraries the arrangement of the projecting beams or rods would be inapplicable, and that it would be better to resort to the original form of the idea, from which the Museum derived its own application of it the idea, namely, of a skeleton door made in shelves, hinged upon the press requiring expansion, running on a wheel resting upon a metal quadrant let into the floor, and opening and shutting like any ordinary door. I have merely to affirm that for the Museum the adaptation we