Bookshelf

“ Few libraries can afford leather-covered shelves like those of the British Museum, but all can have smoothness and rounded edges.
Fig. 3.—Ledged Wall Book-Case.
Reference library cases are constructed similarly to those above described; but as folio and quarto books require storage in this department, it is necessary to make provision for them. This is usually done by making the cases with projecting bases, rising at least 3′ high, and in the enlarged space so obtained fair-sized [6] folios and quartos can be placed. ”

“ But the amateur who not only worships but reads books, needs larger receptacles; and in the open oak cases for modern authors, and for books with common modern papers and bindings, in the closed armoire for books of rarity and price, he will find, we think, the most useful mode of arranging his treasures. His shelves will decline in height from the lowest, where huge folios stand at ease, to the top ranges, while Elzevirs repose on a level with the eye. It is well that each upper shelf should have a leather fringe to keep the dust away. ”

“ Is there anything so delicious as the first exploration of a great library—alone—unwatched? You shut the heavy door behind you slowly, reverently, lest a noise should jar on the sleepers of the shelves. For as the Seven Sleepers of Ephesus were dead and yet alive, so are the souls of the authors in the care of their ancient leathern binding. You walk gently round the walls, pausing here to read a title, there to draw out a tome and support it for a passing glance—half in your arms, half against the shelf. ”

“ Not a book is to be seen—not a shelf is visible, and there is nothing to inform the visitor that he is in the most famous library in the world. ... The eye is bewildered by innumerable busts, statues, and columns. The walls are gay with brilliant arabesques, and the visitor passes through lofty corridors and along splendid galleries, finding in every direction something to please and interest him. ... The printed books number about 125,000 volumes and there are about 25,000 manuscripts. ”

“ Large books keep better if they are laid on their sides; when they stand, the weight of the leaves is a pull on the binding which tends to draw the books out of shape, and sometimes breaks them. Books which stand up should never be permitted to lean over, but should be kept always perfectly erect; the leaning wrenches them out of shape, and soon breaks the binding. A row of books which does not comfortably fill a shelf should be kept up at one end by a book support. There are several good supports on the market. The Crocker is excellent; so is the one described in the Library Bureau catalog. ”

“ How much a neat and carefully arranged shelf of books appeals to one's taste, I need not say, nor urge the point how much an orderly and neatly kept room, or desk, or table adds to one's comfort. The librarian who has the proper spirit of his calling should take pains to make the whole library look neat and attractive, to have a place for everything, and everything in its place. ”

“ Some miniatures in early manuscripts give us a good idea of the way books were stored in the Middle Ages. They are shown lying flat on sloping shelves which extend part-way round the room. Curtains are occasionally shown hanging in front of the shelves to protect the books from dust. Or a sloping shelf was fitted to serve as a readingdesk, and a second flat shelf ran beneath it to take books lying on their sides one above the other. In several miniatures lecterns of very curious design are often depicted ”

“ Dearly, however, though we may treasure the benefits and conveniences which these libraries of ancient foundation afford, for most of us there is another library that is nearer to our hearts; that cosy chamber with which we are accustomed to associate warmth, comfort, soft chairs and footrests, a wide writing-table that we may pile high with books, with scribbling-paper, foolscap and marking-slips in plenty. In short, a room so far removed from earthly cares and noise, that the dim occasional sounds of the outside world serve but to accentuate our absolute possession of ease. ”

“ Modern librarians prefer to enlarge their floor area for the purpose of book-storage, and to provide wall and standard bookcases which are within easy reach of the floor, thus placing the entire stock at the command of both staff and readers without the labour or danger of climbing long ladders. It may be said, generally, that high wall-shelves should never be provided, unless with the provision of an iron gallery half-way up, which can be reached by means of stairs. ”

“ The library is of a prodigious length, not less than three hundred feet; the arched roof of a pleasing form, beautifully stuccoed, and the pavement of red and white marble. Much cannot be said in praise of the cases in which the books are to be arranged. They are clumsily designed, coarsely executed, and darkened by a gallery which projects into the room in a very awkward manner. The collection, which consists of above sixty thousand volumes, is locked up at present in a suite of apartments which opens into the library. ”

“ And the bookcase must be housed. And the house must be kept. And the library must be dusted, must be arranged, should be catalogued. What a vista of toil, yet not unhappy toil! Unless indeed things are to be as they now are in at least one princely mansion of this country, where books, in thousands upon thousands, are jumbled together with no more arrangement than a sack of coals; where not even the sisterhood of consecutive volumes has been respected; where undoubtedly an intending reader may at the mercy of Fortune take something from the shelves that is a book ”

“ I think where the general house library is (as is very often the case) not a living room, there is then much more reason for separating fiction and light literature, and placing them in a very accessible position. It will often be found advisable, as fiction accumulates, to weed out and decide what volumes [36] shall be bound and what rejected or placed in the servants' library. Shelves should therefore be reserved for books which are thus going through a period of probation. ”

“ We Americans love books—popular books!—and we have had sense enough to bring them into our living-rooms, and enjoy them. But when you begin calling a room a library it should mean something more than a small mahogany bookcase with a hundred volumes hidden behind glass doors. I think there is nothing more amusing than the unused library of the nouveau riche, the pretentious room with its monumental bookcases and its slick area of glass doors and its thousands of unread volumes, caged eternally in their indecent newness. ”

“ Typically, of course, the modern library does include many books, a whole separate building and a librarian, but even if the books are few, the place only a room, a chest, a bookcase, or a single shelf, and even if it is only the owner who is at the same time the keeper, it is still recognized to be a library if the books are kept for use and not for sale. ”

“ The injury that comes to library books from insufficient care in protecting them on the shelves is great and incalculable. There are to be seen in every library, volumes all twisted out of shape by the sagging or leaning, to which the end-book is subjected, and which is often shared by all its neighbors on the shelf. ”

“ The rows and rows of shelves, fathoms deep, of old books in numberless editions, cut and uncut, in cloth, parchment, sheep, pigskin, and calf, reposing in the book-stalls and libraries! Books grave and gay, comic and serious, 212storehouses of knowledge that are constantly shifting hands; others precious beyond price that are buried out of sight, their beautiful thoughts unread! The tons and tons of printed pages, in poetry and prose, awake and asleep in the public and private libraries of the great cities! They are as clover-tops in a field. ”

“ The reading-room should be distinct from the book delivery or charging-room, to secure quiet for readers at all hours, avoiding the pressure, hurry and noise of conversation inevitable in a lending library or department. In the reading-room should be shelved a liberal supply of books of reference, and bibliographies, open without tickets to the readers. Next the central desk there should be shelves for the deposit of books reserved day by day for the use of readers. The library chairs, of whatever pattern may be preferred, should always combine the two requisites of strength and lightness. ”

“ It frequently occurs through not noticing that one small book is purposely placed at each end of the shelf, beneath the movable shelf-supports, thus not only saving space, but preventing the injury which a book shelf-high would be sure to receive from uneven pressure. ”

“ A visit to some old church or parish, or even cathedral, library nowadays may afford a notion of the external aspect of the early book-closet of the English student or amateur. The glass case is conspicuously absent; the shelf on which the volumes are ranged has to our eyes a ragged, slatternly look; and nothing can well be more opposite to modern taste. ”

“ No new bookcases would be required for many years; and in fact, nearly a century passed away before any novelty in the way of library-fittings makes its appearance. Further, when new libraries came to be built, the provision of suitable furniture was not easy. The old stall, with two shelves loaded with books attached to them by chains, and a desk and seat for the use of the reader, was manifestly no longer adequate, when books could be produced by the rapidity of a printing-press, instead of by the slowness of a writer's hand. ”

“ I have now traced the evolution of the bookcase from a clumsy contrivance consisting of two boards set at an angle to each other, to the stately pieces of furniture which, with but little alteration, are still in use; and I hope that I have succeeded in shewing that the fifteenth century was emphatically the library-era throughout Europe. Monasteries, cathedrals, universities, and secular institutions in general vied with each other in erecting libraries, in stocking them with books, and in framing liberal regulations for making them useful to the public. ”

“ Of course, you know there are many fine houses where a library is a part of the upholstery, so to speak. Books in handsome binding kept locked under plate-glass in showy dwarf bookcases are as important to stylish establishments as servants in livery, who sit with folded arms, are to stylish equipages. I suppose those wonderful statues with the folded arms do sometimes change their attitude, and I suppose those books with the gilded backs do sometimes get opened, but it is nobody's business whether they do or not, and it is best not to ask too many questions. ”

“ A gallery runs round midway of the high shelves, for the purpose of reaching the books above. On the railing of this gallery are hung the portraits of the various librarians, from the first to the last; some, unhappily, in modern dresses, who look like apes among their venerable predecessors. In the middle of the room the shelves are so arranged on either side, that they form a long alley of enclosed closets, in which every man who wishes to use the library can work completely undisturbed,—an old and most exemplary arrangement. ”

“ Ladders should always be shod with rubber or leather at the foot to prevent slipping, and an arrangement like that shown in the illustration will be found of service in preventing books from being pushed back in the shelves. The hinged top and top shelf are the invention of Mr. MacAlister, one of the secretaries of the Library Association, and the shelf for the books being replaced or taken down was first used at the Kensington Public Library, London. If steps are used instead of ladders they should be made with treads on both sides so that assistants need not turn them about before using. ”

“ The chief requirements of book-shelving are accessibility and adjustability. All authorities on library architecture are agreed that high shelves are an obstruction to quick service, and a danger to books, by placing them in a vitiated atmosphere with a comparatively high temperature. ”

“ Interior of the north-east corner of the Library of Trinity College, Cambridge, shewing the bookcases, table, desk and chairs, as designed by Sir C. Wren.
The cases are 11 ft. 10 in. high, and the wooden floor upon which they stand is raised higher than that of the library. The great depth of the plinth, which Wren utilised for cupboards, recalls the plan of some of the older cases, and there is the little cupboard to contain the catalogue at the end of each standard; but, with these exceptions, there is nothing medieval about them except their position. ”

“ When I ask for an open-faced bookcase they look with a scornful smile across the salesroom toward the mahogany four-posters and say:
"Oh, no, we don't carry those any more. We don't have any call for them. Every one uses the glass-doored ones now. They keep the books much cleaner."
Then the ideal procedure for a real book-lover would be to keep his books in the original box, snugly packed in excelsior, with the lid nailed down. Then they would be nice and clean. And the sun couldn't get at them and ruin the bindings. ”

“ Never permit a book to be turned down on its face to keep the place. This easily besetting habit weakens the book, and frequently soils its leaves by contact with a dusty table. For the same reason, one volume should not be placed within the leaves of another to keep the place where a book-mark of paper, so easily supplied, should always be used. Books should not be turned down on the fore-edges or fronts on the library tables, as practiced in most book-stores, in order to better display the stock. ”