College and Research Libraries


Review Articles 

Space for Study 
Student Reaction to Study Facilities, with 

Implications for Architects and College 
Administrators; a report to the Presidents 
of Amherst College, Alount Holyoke Col-
lege, Smith College, and the University of 
Massachusetts. . . . [Prepared under the 
auspices of the Committee for New Col-
lege.] Amherst, Mass. 1960. 60 p. 

A first reading of this report leaves me 
with some uncertainty as to whether I want 
to laugh or weep: laugh because the report 
is so well done; weep because every single 
conclusion the committee arrived at has 
been well known to those of us who have 
worked with the problem of college library 
buildings since the war. Those of us who 
live in the hinterlands have learned to expect 
a fair amount of provinciality among New 
Englanders, just as we have learned to accept 
the fact that many of our ideas aren't re-
spectable until Harvard comes along and 
rediscovers them, but, really, this report is 
just too much! 

T h e r e isn't the slightest bit of evidence in 
this report that its authors have any concep-
tion that dozens of librarians and architects 
have wrestled with these problems for fifteen 
years, that much has been written on the sub-
ject, that dozens of modular libraries have 
been built and all kinds of experiments have 
been attempted with conclusions that are al-
ready well known to most of us. For example, 
I have been saying for years that 80 per cent 
of the space for readers should be in the 
form of reading room carrels and only 20 
per cent in the form of flat tables. I could 
list library after library that has been organ-
ized along the lines of the conclusions this 
committee discovers. W h at kind of scholar-
ship is this that blandly ignores the record? 

Foundations will read this report and will 
soon be preaching the gospel to us innocents 
who haven't had access to the latest research! 
Amen. 

Having paid my respects to the committee 
for its bibliographic manners, may I now 
congratulate it for conducting a good, clean-
cut experiment and for having arrived at 

conclusions that are sound, wise, and helpful. 
T h i s is a report that every college and uni-
versity librarian should read because it will 
give each of them "scientific" evidence to 
back up what he already knows about how 
to analyze the problem of planning study 
space for a campus. 

T h e validity of the study for comparative 
purposes is limited by the lack of all kinds 
of facilities in the colleges included in the 
study. 

T h e summary of twenty-seven findings on 
pages 40-42 of the report will give the college 
librarian the ammunition he needs to com-
bat the wishful thinking of campus planners 
who have the idea that empty classrooms and 
dormitory libraries will solve the problem of 
providing study facilities on the campus. For 
this help we should all be grateful. Also, this 
report will bolster the courage of those li-
brarians in charge of modular buildings who 
haven't dared subdivide their reading room 
spaces along the lines of the committee's 
findings.—Ralph E. Ellsworth, University of 
Colorado Libraries. 

Building, Shelving, and 
Storage 
Buildings, by Ralph E. Ellsworth. Shelving, 

by Louis Kaplan. Storage Warehouses, by 
Jerrold Orne. ( T h e State of the Library 
Art, Volume 3) New Brunswick, N. J . : 
Graduate School of Library Service, Rut-
gers, the State University, 1960. 3v in 1. 
$5.50. 

T h e only thing really wrong with this 
book is that, for the most part, it simply does 
not cover the subjects named in the title. 
Everything in the book is on the subject, but 
for two out of three of the parts, the material 
covers only a portion of the much broader 
headings. T h e majority of the book (151 
pages) is supposed, by title, to cover "Build-
ings," but it is perfectly clear that the author, 
R a l p h Ellsworth, is not attempting to do 
this. As a matter of fact, he starts his intro-
duction by stating: " T h e problem of hous-

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