Washington standard. [volume] (Olympia, Wash. Territory) 1860-1921, 1895-11-08
MOVING THE LIBRARY.
Gigantic Labor Of Transferring the
Nations Collection of hooks.

last few days great quantities OF dupl
cate volumes, foreign parliamentar
reports and other stuff of no immediat
usefulness to anybody has been tran,
ferred. Librarian Spoilord propose
to effect the removal by degrees.
A temporary elevated railway wi
be built for transferring the content
of the old library to the new one. |
will run directly from the floor of tn
rotunda of the capitol to the mail
floor of the building with the COLDER
dome. Over it small cars propelle,
by electricity will carry loads of books
When the job is finished the structur
moved. The expense involved vii
not be great.
The library will be moved by divis
ions. Poetry in one division and fic
ton in another. Each division wil
be arranged by authors, alphabetically
The divisions are split up into classes
American biography in one class ant
British biography in another. Each
class will be arranged by authors &C
cording to the alphabet. Cromwell
will come next after Cranmer, the
Archbishop who was burned for her.
esy. All lives of any individual, as
Darwin or Agassiz, will be kept to-
gether in bunch.
This method is original with MIR
Spofford. By an ingenious system OF
juggling with the alphabet the new
library will be arranged in such fash
ion that any one OF its 6S5 600 bound
volumes, or 100000 pamphlets can be
touched at moments uotice. The
great stack of book shelves have been
likened to gigantic honeycombs OF
iron. There are three OF them. the
two great ones being each 65 feet high,
1l2 feet long and As feet wide. Each
OF these mighty bookcases will hold
SOC, 600 volumes-more than the pres
ent entire contents OF the library OF
congress.
The biggest books in the library
of congress are bound files Of
old-fashioned newspapers. Among
the heaviest are Bibles printed in the
Middle Ages. with brass clasps and
covers of wood an inch thick. There
are 10000 bound volumes of news
paper files. Mr.. Spofford binds regu-
larly at least two newspapers for each
political party in every State and Ter
ritory. In addition to this are many
newspapers OF the leading cities.
The library of music is not bound
yet, though it will be someday. 1t
comprises over 1,000. 900 compositions.
All OF them have been contributed by
publishers desiring copyrights. The
total bulk of these unbound pieces OF
music is enormous; yet they will be
so arranged that any one OF them can
be found at q minutes notice.
In the new building there will be a
room devoted exclusively to works re-
lating to George Washington. Be-
sides, MIR. Spofford proposes to estab-
lish a literary museum, in which rare
and queer books of all sorts will be dis
played under glass. Among them will
be old Bibles and other volumes cop
led and illuminated by medieval
monks. There will be an art gallery
for exhibiting the best OF the copy.
righted pictures. A separate room will
be devoted to maps.
The book stacks in the new library
tower to the roof Of the building, and
are nine stories or tiers in height.
They could just as easily have been
made 10 stories high or 80 stories.
They are wholly of iron, floor rs we'll
as cases. The metal is absolutely
proof against rust. The shelves are
made gridiron style, so as to afford no
Judgment for dust, cockroaches or
other insects that attack books.
Hand elevators, telephones, pneu-
matte tubes and other mechanical de-
vices will render the hugh bookcases
like a modern office building, equally
useful and convenient in all its parts.
Little cars attached to endless chains
will do all the hauling of the volumes,
carrying them to the stacks and to the
great central reading-room and back
again. The cars will run beneath the
floor OF the reading-room, and all the
machinery will be noiseless and invis.
ible.
On reaching the new library build
ing by way of the temporary railway
on stills the books in process of NOV
ing will be delivered in the central
reading-room, whence they will be
conveyed by electricity to the stacks.
To arrange them will be an enormous
task. If the volumes were arranged
side by side, as on a shelf, they would
reach IA miles. But there are 43
miles of shelves now empty and wait.
ing to be filled. They will hold as
many volumes, put side by side, as
would extend from Washington to
Baltimore and four miles beyond.
1t was suggested that the militia OF
the District of Columbia be called out
for the purpose OF removing the books.