Читать книгу How to plan a library building for library work онлайн

21 страница из 72

But the librarian should be sure rather than obstinate. While he must be clear what he wants to do, he should remember that there may be several ways of doing it. If he is really an intelligent as well as an expert librarian, he will often find in the architect a helpful inventiveness to which he should yield an equal adaptability. Some of the best library ideas are an architect’s development of a librarian’s idea;—witness the stack.

As to a union of use and beauty, I would quote the Alumni Committee on the Harvard University Library:[16] “Not only should the new library be as perfect in plan and equipment as a wise and generous expenditure can make it, it should also, avoiding any display of costliness, possess a beauty and dignity of its own, both within and without, that it may be a constant source of pleasure and inspiration to all who use it.”

ssss1

I was first tempted to translate epigrammatically strength, use, show, but show seemed just the effect to avoid, although the venus suggested it. The lexicon defines the meaning of venustas as loveliness, beauty, charm; and I take it beauty—plain beauty—is what we most wish to see in a library building.