Page:Library Construction, Architecture, Fittings, and Furniture.djvu/69

Rh entrance I place the central building, 60 feet front and 75 deep, which will be wholly devoted to the administrative superintendence and work of the library. Here will be the offices of the librarian and heads of departments, the catalogues, the most general works of reference, and here the business of the library will be done. Here will be apartments for the cataloguers, and for unpacking and arranging books. The bindery will occupy the upper storey. The books will be stored not as now in one general repository, but in a series of rooms thrown out as wings from the central building, and extending around the lot. These rooms will be 50 feet wide, 16 feet high, and as long as it is convenient to make them. The width of the wings will be determined by the space that can be well lighted by side windows, and that can be spanned by iron girders without pillars. Ten of these rooms are shown on Fig. 7, and carrying the same construction four storeys high, there will be forty of these rooms in the whole building. Each of the rooms will contain the books on some special subject, or, in the early stage of growth, several related subjects. One room will be devoted to the fine arts, and will have the proper cases, tables, and other appliances for shelving and studying the large and expensive illustrated works which belong to such a collection. Another room will have the mechanic arts, while another will contain history. Political economy and social science will be found in another room, and so on through the different classifications of