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The conditions have bettered in recent years. “The librarian’s ideal and the architect’s ideal, years ago wide apart, are today coming closer together. Full comparison of views may lead to agreement.”—Hamlin (architect).[24]

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Where should the blame of bad buildings rest? Sometimes, certainly, on the architect. Perhaps he is incompetent, perhaps he has been wilful. Champneys (an architect himself) says of the English situation: “In many cases architects have wilfully sacrificed utility to æsthetic considerations.”[25] And so often in America. I have recently heard of an architect chosen to build a library with only a limited fund available, calling for twenty-five per cent more money for more expensive material, before he had begun to lay out the interior. Here the blame should rest on the architect, unless he acted under positive orders from the committee.

But the architect is not always to blame. Sometimes the librarian has not been strong enough or has not had enough experience to guide him aright. Sometimes a “faddy” librarian has led him to adopt features which the profession generally disapprove. More often the building committee have left the problem to the architect without proper instructions, or have actually instructed him to disregard librarians’ advice, and to make the building showy at any sacrifice of use.