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 twenty-five years, if there is wall or floor room which will be vacant that long. Then comes the very important decision, vitally affecting the size of the room, perhaps its location, and the disposition of the windows and lights; namely, where is the best possible location for the catalog, considering accessibility, supervision and help? Provision for growth can be lateral or up and down, or both. When the drawers get to be more than three or four in a tier, some provision must be made in front of or beside them for a ledge or narrow table on which they can be laid when taken out for inspection. In small libraries the combined catalog case and atlas rack can be built so that the table will form a ledge on all sides, for this use, without other provision.