Rooms, building, fixtures, furniture
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.