PRECIOUS LIBRARY

Sun (Auckland), Volume III, Issue 840, 7 December 1929, Page 32

PRECIOUS LIBRARY

YALE BUILDS GREAT NEW BUILDING 80 MILES OF SHELVES At New Haven, in Connecticut, a great “almost Gothic” building is being erected to house the library of the University of Yale, whidh is at present in rather cramped quarters, writes a correspondent of the London “Times.” The cost of tire building will be £1,400.000, and it will be called the Sterling Memorial Library. The building, which is nearly completed, occupies an entire block, and it will dominate the New Haven landscape. No adjective can so adequately describe the new building as the word “imposing.” The main portion, rising like a huge square tower, is imposing by its height and area; and not less imposing is the immense doorway and entrance hall. It has been designed to be the greatest building in a future group, and it is obvious that the architecture has kept this idea in mind.

The book-stack is built to accommodate 3,500,000 volumes. The tower is subdivided into 16 tiers by means of thin marble floors one and a-quarter inches thick, and rises to approximately 150 feet. Two thousand tons of steel and iron will be incorporated in the construction of the book-stack, and 1.000 tons of marble will be used for the floors and stair treads. The columns, placed end to end, would form a steel span approximately 15 miles long. The shelves, placed end to end, would reach about 80 miles. Any ambitious library attendant desiring to traverse all the aisles without retracing his steps would walk six and a-half miles.

The comfort of the Yale Library readers will be specially looked after, more particularly in the matter of ventilation. This will be accomplished by radiation, with fans and air ducts so arranged that fresh air can be brought in from outside and filtered, and in spme cases humidified. The apparatus also provides for re-circu-lating the air inside the building when wanted. Prompt Service . Rapid delivery of any book . is promised the reader. What is known as the call-slip file will be kept close to the counter, where readers will hand in their cards with the number of the book stated. Only a moment will be necessary to tell the reader if the book is not in the stack, so that he would get a negative answer at once. If the book should be in, the slip would be sent by a pneumatic tube directly to the floor of the stack where the volume is stored, and the attendant, upon getting the book, would merely place it upon the conveyor, which would be constantly in operation and which w ould carry the book directly to the delivery desk. The building is magnificent. What of the books wYiich it w r ill hold? So much emphasis is laid in America nowadays on the magnificence of its buildings that we can admire the wit

!of Mr. Andrew Keogh. Yale s tnde- | fatigable librarian, in suggesting the I following inscription over the imposing entrance: “The Yale Library is Inside.” The Y'ale book-stack, built to take 3,500,000 volumes, will be far from filled. Obviously it is provision for the future. Art galleries and libraries in America work on the principle that once a building to house pictures or books has been built there will be funds forthcoming to till them , Several valuable collections nave been presented to Yale in the past, and the early donors include Sir Isaac Newton, Sir Richard Steele, and Governor Yale; in 1933 the valuable library of Bishop Berkeley was acquired. It possesses intrinsically valuable Latin-American and Chinese collections, an enviable assemblage of ISth century English periodicals, first editions of Milton and Defoe, a really line collection of Fielding, the best collection (so it is claimed) of Goethe outside Weimar, hundreds of Arabic manuscripts, also some Irving, Fennimore Cooper and Jonathan Edwards manuscripts, tq. say nothing of the Melk Monastery copy of the Gutenberg Bible, purchased at a fabulous price from Mr. Rosenbaeli and presented by Mrs. Herkness. The Elizabethan Club has some valuable first folios of Shakespeare, but. though under the jurisdiction of the Yale Library, it will continue to maintain its separate entity in its present building.