“In the mid-twentieth century it became the fashion in library architecture to design buildings as open-floored structures in which furniture, including bookcases, could be moved about at will. The Green/Snead Library of Congress bookstack that six decades earlier had been declared 'perfect' was now viewed as disadvantageously locking a stack arrangement into the configuration of its construction. In the new approach, reinforced concrete floors carry the loads of bookshelves, so that they can be arranged without regard for window placements. This apparently has the appeal of flexibility in the light of indecision, for planners need not look at the functional and aesthetic requirements of their space and its fittings with any degree of finality; they can always change the use of the space as whim and fashion and consultants dictate. It is unfortunate that such has become the case, for it reflects not only a lack of sensitivity to the historical roots of libraries and their use but also rejects the eminently sensible approach to using natural light as a means of energy conservation if nothing else. There is little more pleasing experience in a library than to stand before a bookshelf illuminated not by florescent lights but by the diffused light of the sun. Direct sunlight can be an annoyance and have a downright blinding effect, of course, but it has been the challenge to architects and engineers since Vitruvius to orient their structures--and the bookshelves in them--to minimize such problems in institutional stacks and in private libraries alike. Let us hope that not all future librarians lose their heliotropic instincts nor lose sight of the bookshelves for the forest of bookcases in which they rest.” BookcasesLibrary Arrangement Author:Petroski, Henry
“Another scenario is possible, and that is the e-book will succeed and that books will be downloaded from the Internet. But at the same time, it may be the case that the digital network and the terminals that tap into it will become saturated as limits to growth of computer memory and speed of operation are reached at the same time that electronic traffic becomes gridlocked with e-mail and World Wide Web use. If that were to happen, there would likely be pressure to keep older books in print form, and perhaps even continue to issue newer books that way, rather than clutter the Internet with more and more information. Under such a scenario, older books might not be allowed to circulate because so few copies of each title will have survived the great CD digital dispersal, leaving printed editions that will be as rare as manuscript codices are today. In spite of potential problems, the electronic book, which promises to be all books to all people, is seen by some visionaries as central to any scenario of the future. But what if some electromagnetic catastrophe or a mad computer hacker were to destroy the total electronic memory of central libraries? Curious old printed editions of dead books would have to be disinterred from book cemeteries and re-scanned. But in scanning rare works into electronic form, surviving books might have to be used in a library's stacks, the entrance to which might have to be as closely guarded as that to Fort Knox. The continuing evolution of the bookshelf would have to involve the wiring of bookstacks for computer terminal use. Since volumes might be electronically chained to their section in the stacks, it is also likely that libraries would have to install desks on the front of all cases so that portable computers and portable scanners could be used to transcribe books within a telephone wire's or computer cable's reach of where they were permanently kept. The aisles in a bookstack would most likely have to be altered also to provide seating before the desks, and in time at least some of the infrastructure associated with the information superhighway might begin again to resemble that of a medieval library located in the tower of a monastery at the top of a narrow mountain road.” EbooksLibrary In The Digital Age Author:Petroski, Henry