In considering the first of these questions, the general trend of the population is a good guide. Most towns and cities have some recognised centre—a main street, municipal buildings, town hall, post office, or railway station—and it will be natural to look for a site near one or all of these. Care should be taken, however, to select one which, while as central as possible, shall not be unsuitable because of the noise of heavy and continuous street traffic, or the whistling of locomotives and shunting of trains. In some cases a site may be obtained sufficiently ample to allow the building to be set back, and so minimise what many libraries have found to be a great and irremediable nuisance. Quiet is one of the first requirements of a library, and every effort should be used to obtain it.
The second consideration, that of space, not only for present needs of both readers and books, but for future growth, is often but little considered. In many towns expensive buildings, which should last at least a hundred years, have been erected, covering the whole of the ground available, and it has been found in ten years, or even less, that extension is needed, and there is no possibility of shelving more books, or of giving accommodation to the increasing number of readers. Committees new to library work often have no idea of the rapid growth of their libraries. The following table strikingly illustrates the rapid increase both of books and of readers in a few of the representative British free libraries:—
