Evening star., 1934-10-12
LIBRARY RESEARCH
. SECTION SW|NGS|
Worlds Fair Architectural
Feature Aid to Many Dis
tinguished Workers.

When engineers swung the gigantic
dome of the World Fair Travel and
Transport Building into place at Chi
cago in 1888 it was announced as a
new departure in architecture. The
steel plates of the roof were ''feath-
cred" overlapped, and the whole sus-
pended from tall girders by a system
of cables. The roof "breathed," they
said, with weather changes, rising and
falling gently with corresponding tenn
peratures.
But for five years the entire top por-
tion Of the research rooms section Of
the Library of Congress has been sus-
pended in the same way. Deck A, it is
called, is superimposed on what was
once an old book stack, and that whole
area of the building swings neatly from
beams in the roof. This feature, plus
the fact that the floor of deck A is
laid upon a quarter r-inch-thick sheet
OF Steel gives the floor an odd re-
siliency. 1t is much like walking on
the surface of Michigan cranberry
bog to cross the floors in this wing.
Section Seldom Seen.
And. by the way, there's a section
OF tnat vast storehouse of letters that
the public seldom, if ever, sees-the
research rooms for investigators.
Unless you are scholar whose work
IS scheduled for publication, or is of
such a nature as to benefit mankind
IN some larger way, your chance to
secure the advantages of the quiet and
conveniences of one of these rooms is
practically nil.
This information In nowise indi-
Gates, however, that any of the $50
research rooms and tables are unoc-
cupied. On the contrary, there is a
lengthy waiting list, which contains
important names in the literary world.
Last year 1000 investigators were
accommodated for work varying from
monographs on battlefields and his
toric landmarks, laws Of the world re-
garding women and State tax systems
to books on conditions among Amer
lean miners, Shakespeare, the spread
Of Greek Hellenism, and banking
methods. Eight hundred and thirty
seven men and women from AZ States
and 20 foreign countries lived in in
tellectual communion here for the IL
working hours each day in the scholars
life.
Collective research is done here, in
larger rooms, with as many as seven
individuals hacking away at the same
problem simultaneously. An entire
seminar class of graduate students
from an Eastern university was taught
in one of the rooms in 1888. That
same year Brookings Institute had %
= oria Nd
Rockefeller Foundation had 20. Be-
sides these, there are II students rep
sesenting so learned institutions over
the country and scholars from 81 for
eign universities.
Best Sellers Birthplace.
Each year scores of books, some Of
them best sellers" in their particular
fields, are born in the glass-inclosed
cubicles which line the walls OF this
section of the Library. Here George
Bancroft came to write, among other
famous works. his voluminous His
tory of the Constitution" Another
Bancroft-Frederick-held for several
years the same study room while he
completed his Studies in the Slave
Trade" Other historians have done
all or part of their recent work in
these rooms-Charles and Mary Beard
and James Truslow Adams.
DR.. Earl Sven, librarian Of the
College of William and Mary, with a
large staff of workers, completed here
last year his great Virginia His
torical Guide" containing over 100000
references to the history of that State.
Marquis James here wrote his Pulit-
Eer prize biography, "The Raven, a
Biography of Sam Huston; Vrest
Orton his "Dreiseriana, Bibliograph-
ical Study of Theodore Dresser; Paul
wilstach the major portions of Tide
water Virginia and Potomac Land
ings."
Many Branches Represented.
Work at present is being done on
Aeronautics, history, law, political sci
ence, sociology, economics, education,
literature, biography, religion, medi-
cine, philosophy, agriculture, anthro-
VooIoey. technological science and