Page:Library Construction, Architecture, Fittings, and Furniture.djvu/259

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WEST HAM PUBLIC LIBRARY
235

by no feet, entirely cut off and separate from the remainder of the building.

The entrance-hall is placed centrally, and gives access on the right to the newspaper and magazine reading-room (Fig. 109), and on the left to the public part of the lending library, which also serves as a passage to the reference library behind. The news-room is no feet by 33 feet, and is lit by windows at both ends and by a large skylight in the centre. It is divided into three portions by double columns, and is under the supervision of an attendant stationed in a small room at the end of the entrance-hall. It is planned to seat one hundred persons at ten tables, and to provide reading stands for about eighty newspapers. A file-room is handily placed at the back of the attendant's room, in which are kept recent numbers of the daily and weekly newspapers.

The lending library, on the left of the entrancehall, has a book-store, 67 feet by 37 feet, in which the books are arranged in double cases at right angles to the windows. The public space is 60 feet by 20 feet, and is separated from the book-store by a counter 60 feet long. Opening out of the lending library is the reference library, a room 35 feet square, lit from an area on one side, and also by a skylight in the domed roof. The counter is at the corner nearest the lending library, and the books are stored at the end of the lending department book-store. It is planned to seat eighty persons at ten tables. Parallel with the reference library, which is, as will be seen from Fig. 109, in the centre