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A.

INTRODUCTION

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In this Book

A cursory glance through history fails to throw much light on planning a modern library.

The motto of this work is elucidated.

The possibility of differences between librarian and architect is discussed.

And brief remarks are made about grades and kinds of libraries.

A.

INTRODUCTION

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EVOLUTION OF LIBRARY BUILDING

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[For the first chapters of this book, I am largely indebted to an interesting and scholarly volume by John Willis Clark, entitled “The Care of Books,” published in the year 1901 at Cambridge, Eng. I am emboldened to quote from it by noting how much later books and cyclopedias rely on it as their chief authority, and I commend to all readers both text and illustrations of this fascinating work.]

The Dawn of History

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No precedents of buildings or fixtures loom out of the farthest past. Archæological excavations have found relics of libraries in early ruins, libraries of baked clay tablets, evidently once housed in separate rooms on upper stories of palaces or temples. This literature must have seemed imperishable. There were no fading inks, no crumbling paper, no danger from moisture or worms. But an older foe, still threatening libraries, lurked in that brick era of literature. Fire, both worshiped and feared, was finally fatal. Fire following conquest attacked the oldest libraries and dropped them in shattered fragments into prehistoric cellars, to lie for centuries awaiting exhumation. But even as now resurrected, they tell no tales of their housing or shelving or circulation. It would seem hopeless to grope among these shards for lessons in library science. And yet Dr. Richard Garnett[1] deduced from an Assyrian hexagonal book tablet the idea of hexagonal bookcases for the British Museum.

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