Читать книгу How to plan a library building for library work - Charles C. Soule - Страница 31

U. S. Government. Libraries for the United States government are generally located in the national capitol. One has a separate building, the Library of Congress. The others are attached to the Departments and housed in the Department Buildings.

They may be treated much as law libraries are; indeed a large part of each of them constitutes a law library. Set aside for them well-lighted rooms with a good aspect, in a quiet part of the building. If the rooms are as lofty as the floors of the ordinary department building require, arrange for a two or three-story steel stack. There will be limited service to be provided for, limited circulation, and a rather limited and well-defined storage.

A special problem may soon come, in the form of legislation for a Supreme Court building, which must certainly provide for the consultation library of the Supreme Court, and perhaps for a great part of the Congressional Law Library. In the first instance, the collocation of court room, consultation room, judges’ private apartments, and library, will have to be carefully studied. If the main law library is to come to the new building, it will preponderate architecturally, with the necessary reading and study rooms for the bar. Strong common sense, and able library and juridical advice, will be required to avoid smothering the very definite uses of such a building in architectural embellishments.

State. Each state in the American Union has at least one “state library” at the capital, usually in the capitol, maintained at public charge primarily for the use of state officers, legislators and courts. Latterly they have become also central reference libraries for schools, colleges and citizens throughout the state, and traveling library centers, requiring special facilities for these services. They also require storage for public documents—very near dead literature, fit for close and perhaps dark storage. The growth of state libraries is phenomenal, largely from exchange of documents with other states and the United States, an immense and rapidly increasing literature (quadrupling every twenty-five years) which must be shelved in some form.

“There must be a division of a state library into law, documents, and miscellaneous, with a separate building for law and documents.... I am inclined to see the ideal state library as a great warehouse building. I want a dignified, simple, fireproof building; with heat, light, ventilation, conveniences for work, the very best that can be made, and without a dollar for elaborate display.”—Johnson Brigham, State librarian of Iowa.[36]

In building new state capitols, and in replacing old ones, there is considerable work ahead. In such an impressive and dignified building as the people want, the real needs of departments of the government, especially of the library, get scant consideration. To the library is often assigned some part of a prominent wing whose features, height of stories, size and arrangement of windows, style of shelving and furniture, are largely governed by supposed exigencies of the exterior, developed before the interior has been planned. It will require superhuman effort on the part of librarian to get model library quarters into such environment, but tact, early work, and persistence can often ameliorate conditions. Galleries and alcoves you will probably have to accept and do the best you can with, but it is open to some daring architect to build a stack in full sight, occupying the back half of the inevitable high room, with stack windows on the outside, giving an organ tone to the façade, and an open stack front within to give a similar tone to the interior.

Separate Library Buildings. Large states have already begun to give separate buildings to their general or at least to their law libraries (see Law). Such a segregation is to be commended, if space and money can be afforded, for here the library problems can be treated without prejudice, unhampered by traditions of American State Capitol Architecture.

“I am sure I would never put the State Library in the Capitol. The number of books the state legislature and officers use is very limited.”—Dewey.[37]

Simple construction, appropriate fenestration, interior planning beforehand with definite purposes, disregard of outside flights of steps and porticos, compression of inside passages to a minimum, quiet and restful shape and coloring, may yet produce buildings both useful and beautiful, which people of taste will come thousands of miles to see. Here is a fertile field for state librarians, state commissions, and talented architects.

Historical. Though not always on the same grounds as the state library, most such libraries are situated at the capitol, and have similar characteristics. They ought surely to have dignity and nobility of style, as they have in subject. They are entirely reference libraries, and should have preponderant accommodations for students and investigators, but in proportion to their size they have needs as to storage of books and for readers, very like those of other reference libraries. So far as they include antiquities, they need museum rooms and corridors in their buildings, usually assembly and lecture rooms, and always large fireproof safe rooms or vaults.

See full floor plans of the Wisconsin State Historical Society Building.—Adams.[38]

Genealogical and Antiquarian. So far as libraries are called distinctly antiquarian rather than historical, the museum function increases. Antiquities, even strictly literary, require different treatment from books. Glass doors for larger wall cases, glass cases for manuscripts and incunabula, merit wider corridors and rooms of different proportions, with different lighting. There must be more screens and free wall room for maps, engravings and pictures. There must be different service and supervision.

Genealogy has become such a favorite fad, and has so many societies which foster it, that separate space, perhaps separate buildings, will have to be provided for it. The features of such buildings, however, need have no marked distinction from historical and antiquarian libraries.