Chicago Public Library

Date:
01 December 1897
Reference:
WA/HMM/CM/Sal/52/33
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Chicago Public Library. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    tuous. ‘The general style is that of the Italian renaissance. ‘The furniture is also of heavy oak, rich and quite in keeping with the room. It tones down some of the highly bright tints in the decoration. The room is immense, the largest one in the edifice, being 140 feet long, 55 feet wide and 33 feet high./ It seats 340 readers and has additional room for 75 more at the newspaper racks. The ladies are especially provided for in an apartment enclosed by railings. Length- wise the inner wall on the south of the room are 175 may be compared to the dining- lunch- and ca- terer’s-rooms. But the apartments occupied by the executive officers and the working torce of the library, which after all are in some sense the most important, are distributed throughout the building and are not generally accessible to the public. There are the Directors’ rooms, being the legislative halls of the great institution; the Librarian’ s office, the center of the executive; the Secretary’ s office, the functions of which need no explanation; the Ordering department, which in the household represents the purchasing division the shelvings containing the periodicals, and in front of them the great counter over which they are given out. Above the doors at each end of this counter we read in tablets: ee rn en i We are as liable to be corrupted by books as by com- panions,’’ FIELDING. ‘¢ The world is founded on thoughts and ideas, not on cotton or iron,’’—-EMeErson. It may be in place here to meet an erroneous impression on the part of the public, that the ‘‘reading’’ room is for general reading, which is not the case. Only literature of a periodical nature may be had and used here. We have now treated of the main pud/ic rooms which in the large household of the library Poe for books and periodicals; the Cata/oguing depart- ment, that may be fitly compared to the kitchen, « where the intellectual food is arranged and pre- pared, and the binders’- labeling- and repair- de- partment where it is garnished and dished. Then there is also the so-called Station depart- ment, from which the thirty-one delivery stations are supplied; that is a subdivision of the circu- lating department. ; Space will not permit us to go into details of the rooms and equipments of these departments. Suffice it to say, that the practical ends of them have everywhere been duly considered and all modern improvements in their respective lines have been brought into requisition. ‘The light,
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