Part 8

If this plan could be carried out successfully, it would result in making one book do the service now performed by ten or fifteen books. In other words, this circulating library proposes to furnish its members with ten or fifteen books for the same amount of money they now pay for one book by simply passing the book around from one to another.

The effect of this scheme, if carried into all cities and towns as proposed, would be to reduce the number of books manufactured and sold to about _one-tenth_ of its present magnitude. From a business point of view, publishers and dealers cannot be called upon to make special discounts to encourage such an enterprise.

The encouragement and support given to authors, by patrons of literature, would be reduced by this scheme to about one-tenth of the present amount. The effect of this withdrawal of support to American authors can easily be imagined.

But I do not believe that real book-lovers, intelligent and conservative readers, will be carried away by this passing craze. On the contrary, they have studiously avoided forming that careless, slip-shod habit of reading that characterizes patrons of circulating libraries. The real book-lover selects his books like his friends, with caution, and with discriminating and painstaking care.

From a bookseller's point of view, the "Book-Lovers' Library" is not founded on practical lines. However, as the plan also includes the selling of capital stocks to its patrons, it is probable that the money received from subscriptions, together with the annual membership fees, will be sufficient to keep the enterprise going for some time. But since this is a corporation organized for the purpose of making money, a failure to earn money and to pay dividends will discourage its patrons, cause them to feel that they have been deceived, and finally to withdraw from membership. When the members realize that they are paying five or ten dollars a year for privileges that can be had free at the local library, in most cases they will withdraw their support.

Thus, while in some respects I regard this enterprise as an evil factor, it contains, I think, inherent weaknesses that will finally compass its own end.

But what is said of the relation of publishers and dealers to the Book-Lovers' Library is true in a measure of all circulating and other public libraries. They do not increase, but they positively contract the number of sales that are made in the interest of authors, publishers and dealers.

Under the German system, of which I have spoken, public libraries were at first allowed ten per cent. discount; but recently this has been reduced to five per cent.

Under the English system, profiting by the experience of German publishers, no discount is allowed to public libraries, schools or institutions.

The American system, however, is modelled largely after the German, and it permits the dealers to allow a discount of ten per cent. to local libraries. In doing this local dealers are protected from competition by the publishers, in that the publishers have agreed to add to the net price the cost of transportation on all books sold at retail outside of the cities in which they are doing business. Thus public libraries can buy net books cheaper of the local booksellers than they can buy them of the publishers by just the cost of transportation.

LIBRARY BUILDINGS.

BY W. R. EASTMAN, _New York State Library, Albany, N. Y._

A building is not the first requisite of a public library. A good collection of books with a capable librarian will be of great service in a hired room or in one corner of a store. First the librarian, then the books and after that the building.

But when the building is occupied the value of the library is doubled. The item of rent is dropped. The library is no longer dependent on the favor of some other institution and is not cramped by the effort to include two or three departments in a single room. It will not only give far better service to the community, but will command their respect, interest and support to a greater degree than before.

The following hints are intended as a reply to many library boards who are asking for building plans.

The vital point in successful building is to group all the parts of a modern library in their true relations. To understand a particular case it will be necessary to ask some preliminary questions.

1. _Books._ Number of volumes in library? Average yearly increase? Number of volumes in 20 years? Number of volumes to go in reference room? Number of volumes to go in children's room? Number of volumes to go in other departments? Number of volumes to go in main book room? If the library is large will there be an open shelf room separate from the main book room? Is a stack needed? Will public access to the shelves be allowed?

By answers to such questions a fair idea of the character and size of the book room may be obtained.

_Rules for calculation._ In a popular library, outside the reference room, for each foot of wall space available 80 books can be placed on eight shelves. Floor cases having two sides will hold 160 books for each running foot, and in a close stack 25 books, approximately, can be shelved for each square foot of floor space. But the latter rule will be materially modified by ledges, varying width of passages, stairs, etc.

The above figures give full capacity. In practical work, to provide for convenient classification, expansion, oversized books and working facilities, the shelves of a library should be sufficient for twice the actual number of books and the lines of future enlargement should be fully determined.

2. _Departments._ Is the library for free circulation? Is the library for free reference? Are special rooms needed for high school students? children? ladies? magazine readers? newspaper readers? How many square feet for each of the above rooms? Are class rooms needed as in a college library? Club rooms? Lecture rooms? Museum? Art gallery? Other departments?

3. _Community._ In city or country? Population? By what class will library be chiefly used? School children? Students? Mechanics? Reading circles? Ladies?

4. _Resources and conditions._ Money available? Money annually for maintenance? Size of building lot? Location and surroundings? How many stories? Elevators? Heat? Light? Ventilation?

5. _Administration._ Is library to be in charge of one person? How many assistants? Is a work room needed? unpacking room? bindery? librarian's office? trustees' room?

By careful study of these points a clear conception of the problem is gained and the building committee is prepared to draw an outline sketch indicating in a general way their needs and views. They are not likely to secure what they want by copying or even by competition. The best architects have not the time nor the disposition to compete with each other. A better way is to choose an architect, one who has succeeded in library work if possible, who will faithfully study the special problems, consult freely with the library board, propose plans and change them freely till they are right. And if such plans are also submitted for revision to some librarian of experience or to the library commission of the state, whose business and pleasure it is to give disinterested advice, so much the better.

The following outlines taken from actual library buildings are offered by way of suggestion.

_Square plan._

An inexpensive building for a small country neighborhood may have one square room with book shelves on the side and rear walls. A convenient entrance is from a square porch on one side of the front corner and a librarian's alcove is at the opposite corner leaving the entire front like a store window which may be filled with plants or picture bulletins. With a stone foundation the wooden frame may be finished with stained shingles.

_Oblong plan._

A somewhat larger building may have a wider front with entrance at the center.

Book shelves under high windows may cover the side and rear walls and tables may stand in the open space.

It will be convenient to bring together the books most in demand for circulation on one side of the room and those needed most for study on the opposite side. One corner may contain juvenile books. In this way confusion between readers, borrowers and children will be avoided. Each class of patrons will go by a direct line to its own quarter. This is the beginning of the plan of departments which will be of great importance in the larger building.

The number of books for circulation will increase rapidly and it may soon be necessary to provide double faced floor cases. These will be placed with passages running from the center of the room towards the end and that end will become the book or delivery room and the opposite side will be the study or reference room.

_T-shape plan._

The next step is to add space to the rear giving a third department to the still open room. If the book room is at the back the student readers may be at tables in the right hand space and the children in the space on the left. The librarian at a desk in the center is equally near to all departments and may exercise full supervision.

The presence of a considerable number of other busy persons has a sobering and quieting effect on all and the impression of such a library having all its departments in one is dignified and wholesome. It may be well to separate the departments by light open hand rails, screens, cords or low book cases. It is a mistake to divide a small building into three or four small rooms.

_Separate rooms._

For a larger library these rails must be made into partitions, giving to each department a separate room. Partitions of glass set in wooden frames and possibly only eight feet high may answer an excellent purpose, adding to the impression of extent, admitting light to the interior of the building and allowing some supervision from the center. With partitions on each side, the entrance becomes a central hallway with a department at each side and the book room at the end. This is the best position for the book room for two special reasons. Overlapping the departments in both wings it is equally accessible from either, and at the back of the house a plainer and cheaper wall can be built admitting of easy removal when the growth of the library requires enlargement.

Sometimes the angles between the book room and the main building may be filled to advantage by work room and office. These working rooms though not large and not conspicuous are of vital consequence and should be carefully planned.

We have now reached a type of building which, for lack of a better word, I may call the "butterfly plan," having two spread wings and a body extending to the back. Others call it the "trefoil." This general type is being substantially followed in most new libraries of moderate size. From one entrance hall direct access is given to three distinct departments, or perhaps to five, by placing two rooms in each wing.

_Modifications required by limited space._

If we have an open park to build in we shall be tempted to expand the hallway to a great central court or rotunda. Perhaps the importance of the library may justify it, but we should be on our guard against separating departments by spaces so great as to make supervision difficult or passing from one to another inconvenient. We should aim to concentrate rather than scatter.

More frequently the lot will be too narrow. We must draw in the wings and make the narrower rooms longer from front to back. With a corner lot we can enter on the side street, leaving a grand reading room on the main front and turning at right angles as we enter the house pass between other rooms to the book room at the extreme end of the lot. Or again, we shall be obliged to dispense entirely with one wing of our plan, and have but two department rooms instead of three on the floor. Every location must be studied by itself.

_Other stories._

Basement rooms are of great service for work rooms and storage. A basement directly under the main book room is specially valuable to receive the overflow of books not in great demand.

A second and even a third story will be useful for special collections, class and lecture rooms or a large audience hall. In a library of moderate size it will often be found convenient to build a book room about 16 feet high to cover two stories of bookcases and wholly independent of the level of the second floor of the main building.

_Extension._

To meet the needs of a rapidly growing library it is important at the beginning to fix the lines of extension.

A building with a front of two rooms and a passage between may add a third room at the rear, and at a later stage, add a second building as large as the first and parallel to it, the two being connected by the room first added.

This is the architect's plan for the Omaha Public Library.

_Open court._

When a library is so large that one book room is not enough, two such rooms may be built to the rear, one from each end of the building with open space between, and these two wings may be carried back equally and joined at the back by another building, thus completing the square around an open court.

This gives wide interior space for light and air, or grass and flowers. Such is the plan of the Boston Public and Princeton University libraries. It will be the same in Minneapolis when that library is complete. In the plan of the new library at Newark, N. J., the central court is roofed over with glass becoming a stairway court with surrounding galleries opening on all rooms. In Columbia University, New York, as in the British Museum, the center is a great reading room capped by a dome high above the surrounding roofs and lighted by great clerestory windows.

If the street front is very long there may be three extensions to the rear, one opposite the center and one from each end, leaving two open courts as in the plan for the New York Public or the Utica Public; and this general scheme may be repeated and carried still farther back leaving four open courts as in the Library of Congress. This plan can be extended as far as space can be provided.

When the general plan of the large building is fixed, passages will be introduced, parallel to the front and sides, and departments will be located as may be judged most convenient, always having regard to the convenience of the patrons of each department in finding ready access to the books they need and providing for supervision and attendance at least cost of time, effort and money. Extravagance in library building is not so often found in lavish ornament as in that unfortunate arrangement of departments which requires three attendants to do the work of one or two.

_Light._

Natural light should be secured if possible for every room. Windows should be frequent and extend well up toward the ceiling terminating in a straight line so as to afford large supply of light from the top. Windows like those in an ordinary house or office building, coming within two or three feet of the floor are more satisfactory both for inside and outside appearance than those which leave a high blank wall beneath them. From the street a blank wall has a prison-like effect; on the inside it cuts off communication with the rest of the world and the impression is unpleasant. The proper object of library windows six or eight feet above the floor is to allow unbroken wall space for book shelves beneath them. There is no serious objection to this at the back of the room or sometimes at the sides of the house where the windows are not conspicuous from the street, but every room of any size, if it is next to the outer wall, should have windows to look out of on at least one side.

A book room at the back of a building may secure excellent light from side windows eight feet above the floor with lower windows at the back.

The lighting of large interior rooms is often a difficult problem. Light will not penetrate to advantage more than 30 feet. Skylights, domes and clerestory windows are used. In the case of the dome or clerestory the room to be lighted must be higher than those immediately surrounding it. The clerestory plan with upright windows is most satisfactory when available, being cheaper and giving better security against the weather than the skylight. In a large building with interior courts, the lower story of the court is sometimes covered with a skylight and used as a room.

This appears in the plans for the New York Public and the Utica Public libraries. Skylights must be constructed with special care to protect rooms against the weather.

The problem of light is peculiarly difficult in the crowded blocks of cities. A library front may sometimes touch the walls of adjoining buildings so that light can enter only from the front and rear. If extending more than 40 feet back from the street, it will be necessary to narrow the rest of the building so as to leave open spaces on each side, or to introduce a little light by the device of light wells. Occasionally a large city library is found on the upper floors of an office building, where light and air are better than below, and the cost of accommodation is less. The use of elevators makes this feasible.

_Shelving._

The general scheme of book shelves should be fixed before the plan of the building is drawn. Otherwise the space for books can not be determined and serious mistakes may be made. Between the two extremes of open wall shelves and the close stack a compromise is necessary. The large library will put the bulk of its books in a stack and bring a considerable selection of the best books into an open room. The small library will begin with books along the walls and provide cases for additions from time to time as needed. Its patrons will enjoy at first the generous spaces of the open room without an array of empty cases to offend the eye and cumber the floor. When walls are covered with books a floor case will be introduced and others when needed will be placed according to plan, till at last the floor is as full as it was meant to be, and the basement beneath having served for a time to hold the overflow, a second story of cases is put on the top of the first. This process should be planned in advance for a term of 20 years.

For public access passages between cases should be five feet wide. Cases have sometimes been set on radial lines so as to bring all parts under supervision from the center. This arrangement, specially if bounded by a semi-circular wall, is expensive, wasteful of space and of doubtful value, except in peculiar conditions. It is not adapted to further extension of the building.

_Size of shelf._

For ordinary books in a popular library the shelf should not be more than eight inches wide with an upright space of ten inches. Eight shelves of this height with a base of four inches and crown finish of five inches will fill eight feet from the floor and the upper shelf may be reached at a height of 81 inches or six feet nine inches. Ordinary shelves should not exceed three feet in length. A length of two and a half feet is preferred by many. A shelf more than three feet long is apt to bend under the weight of books. For books of larger size a limited number of shelves with 12 inches upright space and a few still larger should be provided. The proportion of oversize books will vary greatly according to the kind of library, a college or scientific collection having many more than the circulating library. Any reference room will contain a large number of such books and its shelves should correspond.

_Movable shelves._

Much attention has been given to devices for adjustment of shelves. Some of these are quite ingenious and a few are satisfactory. No device should be introduced that will seriously break the smooth surface at the side. Notches, cross bars, iron horns or hooks or ornamental brackets expose the last book to damage. If pins are used they should be so held to their places that they cannot fall out. Heads of pins or bars should be sunk in the wood and the place for books left, as near as possible, absolutely smooth on all sides. It is at least a question whether the importance of making shelves adjustable and absolutely adjustable has not been greatly overrated. As a fact the shelves of the circulating library are very seldom adjusted. They may have all the usual appliances gained at large expense but there is no occasion to adjust them outside the reference room. They remain as they were put up. It is probably well to have the second and third shelf movable so that one can be dropped to the bottom and two spaces left where there were three at first. But all other shelves might as well be fixed at intervals of 10 inches without the least real inconvenience and the cases be stronger for it and far cheaper. A perfectly adjustable shelf is interesting as a study in mechanics, but is practically disappointing. Its very perfection is a snare because it is so impossible to set it true without a spirit level and a machinist. All shelves in a reference room should be adjustable. Bound magazines might have special cases.

_Wood or iron shelves._

Iron shelf construction has the advantage of lightness and strength, filling the least space and admitting light and air. Where three or more stories of cases are stacked one upon another iron is a necessity. It also offers the best facilities for adjustment of shelves and is most durable.

On the other hand it is more difficult to get, can be had only of the manufacturers in fixed patterns, and costs at least twice as much as any wood, even oak, unless carved for ornament, and four or five times as much as some very good wooden shelves. This great cost raises the question whether the advantages named are really important. Few village libraries need more than two stories of shelves in a stack. If iron is more durable we can buy two sets of wooden shelves for the cost of one of iron--and when we buy the second set will know better what we want. The importance of shelf adjustment has been exaggerated.

A more important consideration, to my mind, is that iron is not so well adapted to the changing conditions of a growing library. It is made at a factory and to be ordered complete. It is bolted to the floor and wall at fixed intervals. But we have seen that a gradual accumulation of bookcases is better than to put all shelving in position at first.

Wooden cases are movable. You begin with those you need and add others as you have more books, you can change and alter them at any time with only the aid of the village carpenter, and enjoy the wide open spaces till the time for filling them comes.

Iron with all its ornaments belongs in the shop. It is not the furniture you prefer in your home. The item of cost will usually decide the question. For libraries of less than 30,000 volumes, where close storage is not imperative, wood has the advantage.

_Miscellaneous notes._

A floor of hard wood is good enough for most libraries. Wood covered with corticene or linoleum tends to insure the needed quiet. Floors of tile, marble or concrete are very noisy and should have strips of carpet laid in the passages.

On the walls of reading rooms it is neither necessary nor desirable to have an ornamental wainscot, nor indeed any wainscot at all, not even a base board. Book cases will cover the lower walls and books are the best ornament.

Small tables for four are preferred in a reading room to long common tables. They give the reader an agreeable feeling of privacy.

Do not make tables too high. 30 inches are enough.

Light bent wood chairs are easy to handle.