On Books and the Housing of ThemGladstone, W. E. (William Ewart)
Science
On Books and the Housing of Them
Gladstone, W. E. (William Ewart)
Book collecting -- Great Britain; Books; Library science -- Great Britain
In order to attain these advantages, two conditions are fundamental.
First, the shelves must, as a rule, be fixed; secondly, the cases, or a
large part of them, should have their side against the wall, and thus,
projecting into the room for a convenient distance, they should be of
twice the depth needed for a single line of books, and should hold two
lines, one facing each way. Twelve inches is a fair and liberal depth
for two rows of octavos. The books are thus thrown into stalls, but
stalls after the manner of a stable, or of an old-fashioned coffee-room;
not after the manner of a bookstall, which, as times go, is no stall
at all, but simply a flat space made by putting some scraps of boarding
together, and covering them with books.
This method of dividing the longitudinal space by projections at right
angles to it, if not very frequently used, has long been known. A great
example of it is to be found in the noble library of Trinity College,
Cambridge, and is the work of Sir Christopher Wren. He has kept these
cases down to very moderate height, for he doubtless took into account
that great heights require long ladders, and that the fetching and use
of these greatly add to the time consumed in getting or in replacing a
book. On the other hand, the upper spaces of the walls are sacrificed,
whereas in Dublin, All Souls, and many other libraries the bookcases
ascend very high, and magnificent apartments walled with books may in
this way be constructed. Access may be had to the upper portions by
galleries; but we cannot have stairs all round the room, and even with
one gallery of books a room should not be more than from sixteen to
eighteen feet high if we are to act on the principle of bringing the
largest possible number of volumes into the smallest possible space. I
am afraid it must be admitted that we cannot have a noble and imposing
spectacle, in a vast apartment, without sacrificing economy and
accessibility; and vice versa.
The projections should each have attached to them what I rudely term an
endpiece (for want of a better name), that is, a shallow and extremely
light adhering bookcase (light by reason of the shortness of the
shelves), which both increases the accommodation, and makes one short
side as well as the two long ones of the parallelopiped to present
simply a face of books with the lines of shelf, like threads, running
between the rows.
The wall-spaces between the projections ought also to be turned to
account for shallow bookcases, so far as they are not occupied by
windows. If the width of the interval be two feet six, about sixteen
inches of this may be given to shallow cases placed against the wall.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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