by Joseph L. Wheeler

University of Illinois Library School

Urbana, Illinois

 

 

 

THE EFFECTIVE LOCATION OF PUBLIC LIBRARY BUILDINGS

 

Summary of Study A keen analyst of community factors and world-known social scientist and educator, the late Edward L. Thorndike, created a score-card of the elements which make any community a good one in which to live and work. 1

 

Many towns and cities have used his score-card to improve themselves, and to advertise their attractions. In his list of factors, he ranked the public library, its budget and its circulation, higher than any other except school sup-port and the rate of graduation from the public high schools. For the comparatively small cost for efficient library buildings and services, a community gets high return in vital everyday services, in satisfaction and prestige, from its library in the heart of the shopping and office pedestrian center, attractively designed in up-to-date style.  

 

City planners, architects, librarians, library board members and other public officials can make the public library building and its location dominant factors in increasing the proportion of citizens who use new information and ideas, who read, investigate and think, who cultivate constructive purposes, who raise the morale and quality of a town or city. All worked together with bold imagination at Hartford to keep their stunning new library downtown onMain Street, a block from the old location. It is suspended above six-lane Whitehead Highway, which in turn runs above Park River, by five enormous trusses, two of them believed the largest in the United States.For such an effort to succeed, those involved in it need to free them-selves of traditional assumptions as to modern library use and location. 

 

Thousands of libraries and communities, millions of citizens, are paying a penalty today for grievous errors of judgment in locating and designing public libraries, due to basic misconceptions as to their purpose and the habits and reactions of those who use them, or could be encouraged to do so.Though individual exceptions to the recommendations of this report will be found, they usually occur in situations with particular circumstances which cannot be treated in a statement designed for wide application. 

 

The general conclusions of this study, summarized here, rest (a) on the responses to a questionnaire (reprinted at the end of this report) to all public libraries in cities of over 100, 000 and a number of smaller ones, (b) on a study of cur-rent literature of both librarianship, architecture, and city planning, (c) on the actual experiences (both favorable and unfavorable), of a number of pub-lic libraries in the last 10 years in their choice of locations for buildings, and (d) on studies made locally by several libraries, within the last four or five years.-1-

 

1. The entire American concept of the purpose, attitudes, and use-fulness of its libraries would be revolutionized, if they were designed in simple, straightforward gracious style, with main floor and entrance on street level, with open welcoming fronts reaching directly to the sidewalk so that everyone could see their brightly lighted and colorful interiors and their busy interesting activities and services to the public. The fronts of many old libraries should be redesigned in modern style, especially when enlargements are called for.

 

2. Ninety per cent of the librarians polled believe (and a multitude of cases indicate) that every new public library, central or branch, should be strategically located in the center of the major pedestrian shopping and office area, where busy stores would flourish. Reference use of the library is reduced by poor location away from the major traffic stream followed by potential patrons, even more so than is the loan of library books for recreational reading. To get the best site which would be profitable in the long run, a community will have to pay more, relative to building cost, than most per-sons realize. The site may justifiably cost half as much as the building. It would be better to save on building cost than on the site cost.

 

3. Parking is an ever pressing problem, but several studies made since 1953 show that no more than 20 to 25 per cent of the adults who us the library make a special trip by auto to do so. Most library use is in connection with other downtown or neighborhood shopping area errands or business. If a central or branch library is located solely to assure space for parking few will use it other than those who live close by and those who make a special auto trip to it. Most of the rest of the community will actually find it less convenient, not more so, and the value of closeness to the crowd is lost. The parking problem is not one which the library can or needs to solve by or for itself, though it has an obligation to cooperate in getting nearby parking.

 

4. The library should not be placed in a civic center, or "coordinated"with other civic or cultural buildings, to fulfill some theoretical relationship. The library clientele's own objectives and habits deserve prime consideration; they are closely related to people's daily work and to shopping and business errands. The public library should not be placed in or near a school or college, because these are almost always located away from pedestrian centers, and by no means is the library especially for their use. Children and students will find their way to the library wherever it is located, but older teen-agers and adults, for whom library use is potentially so valuable, will fail to use it when out of sight and out of mind. Even in large cities the central library should not be split with part in the center of town and part at less costly sites further out. Public libraries have had branches for fifty years, but the central library is the sum of more than its parts, a combination of circulating, reference, and other special collections and and services which cannot be split without heavy penalties in duplicated collections and staff, in inconvenience and disappointment to readers, and in operating waste

 

5. Phrases like "It's a local problem," "No rule covers all cases, "and "Let's decide by an opinion poll" are generally escape routes from facing the basic need of easiest availability for the greatest number, and the cost of strategic sites that assure placement and design intended to attract ever more of the population to purposeful reading and informational use of books. Some city planners, librarians, trustees, and architects have rendered immeasurable help to their client-communities in meeting this challenge. All have the obligation and duty to assist in meeting library objectives, viz., the highest quality book and information service at the least service-unit cost, to the greatest possible number of citizens, adults as well as children.

 

 

Misconceptions Concerning Library Use and Location 

 

Misconception:  That the library building is primarily a monument, something to look at, that it should stand apart, as a "quiet retreat, " to be looked up to on a raised base, and that it should above all be surrounded by beautiful grounds in order to have the "proper setting. " Present-day thinking holds and actual practice demonstrates that the library can become a habitual part of the daily life of even more citizens by being quickly reached and easily and familiarly approached. It should rub elbows with and be part of the workaday world. No false dignity, no heavy and forbidding facade, no retreat or withdrawal from the crowd, no death-like silence have any place in the modern library building concept.

 

Misconception: That the public library is primarily a genteel "cultural" and recreational agency, and consequently belongs with other cultural buildings. Present-day thinking holds and actual practice demonstrates that the public library can increasingly serve as the community's reference and information center, and increasingly library resources and emphasis are being devoted to this end. As one facet of this, many business concerns teach their executive, supervisory, and research personnel how to read faster and better, and expect them to read books, magazines, and reports on current developments in their respective fields; on such a factor the competitive race for efficiency and progress may be lost to some other concern. As a recent Boston Public Library report said, "If such public library resources were not readily accessible, many business houses would be obliged to set up their own special libraries, purchase reference volumes, allocate office space..., subscribe to information services. . .and employ additional personnel ... ." Even then these company libraries would be isolated from the profuse related background materials which are often involved in looking up what at first appears a simple question in a specialized field.

 

Misconception: That book and library use are decreasing in the face of television, radio, and other competing forms of communication. Present day thinking holds and actual practice demonstrates that each means of communication serves certain purposes better than do others, and that, for serious study and pursuit of knowledge, books and libraries are relatively immune to competition. The increase in the proportion of the population with high school and college education, the constant trend toward specialization and technological change, and the increased leisure for most persons are all factors which stimulate per capita book and library use. Most public libraries in America have steadily increased the number of books loaned and reference questions answered, in the last ten years, in the face of both television and record-high employment levels. This is clearly shown by the4"Index of American Public Library Circulation" which reveals a 20 per cent increase in total circulation from the wartime low to 1956, and a steady decline in fiction from 46 per cent of the total in 1939 to 26 per cent in 1956, with nonfiction holding its own and even increasing.

 

Misconception: That a library should stand in the geographic or population center of a community, or alternatively that it should stand close to schools, colleges, or other cultural agencies. Present day thinking holds and actual cases demonstrate that the library belongs and will serve best in the area where most people trade or congregate, in what might be called the "center of gravity" of downtown shopping and office worker pedestrians.This is usually unrelated to population or land distribution but is influenced by travel facilities and habits. Studies have shown5 that library patronage is drawn, not from a circle around the branch or central library, but from an approximately oval and generally quite irregular area whose axis lies along a main stream of travel and whose narrower end (with the library nearer it than to the center) is close to the nearest larger trading or employment area. To place library buildings in the center of geographical quadrants, as was recommended in a Salt Lake City plan report, regardless of pedestrian centers, or to place them near schools or in civic centers, is to magnify their inconvenience for adults. Just as a retail merchant would not locate his store so as to require a special trip by each customer, so the library cannot expect the patrons to walk or drive a considerable distance just to use books. In today's world of full schedules and busy lives, both the retail store and library are well-advised to make themselves conveniently accessible to large crowds. For a service agency like the library, which people are not compelled to use and for which there is no captive audience, neither wide lawns, ease of parking, or respectable neighbors are worth as much as direct contact with busy pedestrian streams.

 

Other misconceptions will only be mentioned here, and some of these will be discussed below. Even if there are plenty of branches or book mobiles, the central library does not become less important but tends to become more important. Even if there is a large active "downtown branch, " the central library building should not be placed in a remote part of the city. It is not true that the use of the library for reference and information purposes is unaffected by the location of the building. Adequate parking space is not the main consideration in choosing a library site; the main consideration is that the library be located in the center of the shopping and other pedestrian crowd. The growth of the suburbs has not made obsolete the strong downtown central library, nor have the suburban shopping centers yet demonstrated they will be the most strategic library locations over the long run.Traffic and other downtown noise do not interfere with library use nearly as much as an inconvenient location; good building construction can reduce the effects of outside noise but not the effects of a poor location. While the lo-cation of a library building has to take cognizance of local factors, an effective site has to be chosen on basic principles growing out of the experiences of many other communities.The Opinions of LibrariansLike other American institutions, our public libraries are undergoing a transformation in seeking to make themselves more effective in meeting present-day patron demands. Four main trends are relevant. For one thing there are ever more instances of libraries combining into larger units or making cooperative contracts, in order to economize on overhead expenses and to offer more and more specialized services. One implication of this is fewer and larger branches rather than more and smaller ones, directly contrary to the dictum of Frank Lloyd Wright, "Let's have good libraries, not igones, with a pleasant home likeness'. 6 No town or city can afford to follow his idea, which is based on a misconception of the type of service and use of the modern library. Branches are badly needed in many cities, but at 1957 costs for building construction and operating expenses a branch library is increasingly hard to justify unless assured a circulation of100,000 books a year.For a second thing, the modern public library increasingly emphasizes nonfiction use and information-finding on current citizenship and world affairs questions, on occupational, home, and hobby problems, as well as on general cultural subjects. Audio-visual materials (such as 16mm. educational motion picture films and phonograph records) have been eagerly welcomed by the library's patrons, and have been found useful in library adult education programs. A third main trend is that libraries are paying increased attention to better management methods (such as work simplification, training of supervisors, and experimentation), which have proved worthwhile in private competitive business. The high proportion which salaries are of total expenditures (about two-thirds in most cases) makes it desirable to attract and keep competent employees, and to concentrate them at fewer stronger branches rather than more weak ones. High salaries for trained professional librarians are an economy in the long run; such persons can substantially aid readers and can maximize the potential contribution which a good building and a good book collection can make to their community.A fourth trend is that public library buildings are being built which break with traditional designs (characterized as mausoleums and "morgues of culture") and which definitely assist in carrying out the library's objectives and service program. The objective of the American public library has been well stated, by an Argentine educator, as "the social penetration of the book. "7 Increasingly it services and distributes one of the most valuable commodities any progressive community can get its hands on, viz.,new ideas, new constructive purposes, new and broader ranges of thinking, up-to-date information, facts instead of delusions, aid and support for every substantial personal and community undertaking. The citizen who fails to draw on the experience of others to help solve his own problems deprives himself of priceless help, loses invaluable time, makes false moves, and wastes part of his own effort. To help him realize this, librarians use every means at their disposal, and one of their chief ways is by studying their communities in order, among other things, to identify the best possible locations for library buildings.In 1952 the questionnaire appended to this report was sent to the public librarians of all 106 cities of over 100, 000 population, with 15 libraries of75, 000 to 100, 000 population, and 94 libraries (75 per cent of the total) res-ponded. Have recent developments which have totally changed some of the patterns of urban life, compelled a new set of criteria for library location?Is it true that emphasis on a pedestrian center location is not forward-look-ing and overlooks "newer elements in the picture"? Special attention is called, in the letter conveying the questionnaire for this study, to the necessity for forgetting previous concepts and reconsidering the questions in the light of present conditions (see sample letter at end of this report).The key question to settle this (in point No. 2) asked these librarians if they would choose a site "nearer to or farther from the best shopping-pedestrian corner" in their cities, if they were to replace their present central library building. Of the ninety-four replies, twenty-one (23 percent) report they are already"sitting pretty," i. e. in the heart of things, and would not wish to move; sixty-four others (68 per cent) definitely state they would wish to be closer to the best shopping-pedestrian corner. Three(3 per cent) say "Nearer if good parking" were available; these are Newark,Scranton, and Wichita. Three others, Altoona, Fort Worth, and Fresno, would go farther away to get better parking. Of the remaining three, Baltimore County had no central building, Buffalo has an excellent present site, though too small for a new building and the library is being pressured to take a poorer location, and Memphis has taken the drastic step of deliberately placing its new main library four miles away from the downtown business center, within three blocks of which it still maintains its old central building. Some of the eighty-five librarians favoring the pedestrian-center lo-cation, (who comprise 91 per cent of the total who replied) speak as follows as to why they would wish to keep or acquire the strategic downtown pedestrian corner. Atlanta, with a great department store across the street,"has an ideal premium location with respect to shopping and working habits of the people. " Berkeley has an ideal location and "despite parking problem would not wish to move. " Unfortunately Berkeley's entrance was placed around the corner, the main floor raised above the sidewalk, and a blank stucco wall is presented to the stream of main street pedestrians, who are unaware they are passing the library and see and know nothing of the interior. Charlotte, North Carolina, "can see no substitute for the downtown site. If we hope to reach a larger number of people we must place the main library where everyone will pass it often, and the only place they will see it often is down in the thick of things." Chicagors old building stands on Michigan Avenue, near Marshall Field's, and the librarian "would not ex-change present site for any other. " Dayton, now in the center of a four-block park, has for forty years wished to get a new building "out at the major street intersection. " Nashville "could do twice the business if in business center. A thousand books at the corner will lead to far more read-ing by a given individual than 100, 000 at the other end of town. " Quincy,Massachusetts: "Our entrances one hundred feet from sidewalk keep people from coming in. " Saginaw "would go nearer, on the corner next to Wool-worths. " Wilmington's library stands on one of the highest frontage value sites in the city, directly on the main street at a major downtown intersection, and understandably wants no other site.Has increased auto use nullified the stand taken by these librarians inthe literature over the last forty years ? Matthew Dudgeon of Milwaukee made a strong statement along these very lines in 1913. 8 Melvil Dewey, the great American library pioneer, had expressed this same point of view in 1926:"Fifty years ago I urged that the magnificent Ridgeway Branch, Philadelphia, be put in a more convenient location... They built it off center... When I went in and looked over the great reading room expecting to see two or-7-

 

three hundred people busily at work I saw only three or four... I said 'Isthis the average attendance ?' Librarian Smith answered 'Dewey, there is scarcely a day that somebody doesn't come into this library. "' 9 Two resumes of librarians' opinions, in the 1920's, on this matter10 clearly re-flect the same general conclusion. The latest considered statement in print, by Charles Mohrhardt and Ralph Ulveling of the Detroit Public Library, 1952, agrees that "A prominent, easily accessible location is required to attract a large number of persons. Therefore, the library should be placed where people naturally converge--in the heart of the shop-ping and business district, rather than in a remote location such as a park, civic center or quiet side street. '11 In 1958 there are several librarians who feel strongly that all these earlier considerations are cancelled by al-most universal use of autos and clamor for parking. But studies since 1954, by various persons, indicate that accessibility by the pedestrian crowd is still the first requirement.Librarians are logically in a position to have sounder opinions than anyone else in a community, as to where libraries should be placed. But when the time approaches to decide a library's location, public officials, citizen groups, real estate men, planners, newspaper editors, and manyothers, often ignore experienced opinion and advice, only to offer un sound, illogical proposals and bring heavy pressure to do the very things which would be and have proved to be most disastrous for the libraryts services to its community. The experienced advice of bankers would not be flouted as to banks, school administrators would determine sites for schools, hotelmen as to hotels, industrial engineers as to factories. Librarians are not so narrow or simple minded as not to realize that their libraries are partof a community service pattern. They have the same two main groups of reasons for preferring a strategic site in the middle of major pedestrian traffic, as do all retail merchants. These are, convenience of access, to build volume, and the effect of greater volume of service on decrease of cost per reader served.Convenience of access means putting services and goods within easy reach of as many persons as possible, not merely those already using the library. It is achieved not only by strategic and usually expensive location of the site but also by providing quick, easy approach from the sidewalk and by giving passers-by a full view of what goes on inside the library hour after hour. Bookstores too have learned that location means success or failuret department stores typically place the book department on their high value main floors. Bookstores have also found it profitable to open up a sidewalk view into the store's interior, as at Scribner's Fifth Avenue store in New York. 12 Front windows and the first 25 feet across the front comprise by far the most profitable space of any store, in attracting customers-8-

 

in large numbers. But if a library is placed off by itself where nonusers will not see it, all this effort to attract is wasted.Just as most modern stores need a large volume of business in order to succeed with only a small profit per transaction, so a library needs a large volume of business in order to utilize economically the necessary minimum effective working collection of books and trained and specialized staffand to justify a larger book collection, additional staff, or special services.Obviously the larger the number of readers in a library, the lower the costper transaction, including overhead, such as the capital investment in thebuilding, and current operating costs, such as even higher salaries neededto attract librarians in the continuing tight labor market, and the greater thereturn on the tax funds so spent.Unfortunately occasional librarians appear unconcerned over costs ofservice operations. In one large city, which advocates non-central locations,the U. S. Office of Education statistics 13 for 1955 show a per capita librarycost of $2. 16 vs. a national average of $1. 52 for cities of over one million, withonly 2.43 books lent per capita vs. an average 2.92 books, one other city wheregood sites have been emphasized for many years, lending 6. 7 books; and a"percirculation cost" (dividing total circulation into total library expenditures)of 89 cents compared with an average of 52 cents. Some of the libraries com-prised in these averages carry on a tremendous volume of high type, special-ized reference and other services which swell total costs. Few time-savinggadgets, valuable as they are, can overcome the cost of staff time-loss in apoorly planned library, and no program of promotion and good service canovercome the potential patronage loss that results from a non-strategic site.It would be unfair not to state some of the expressions of minorityopinion on this question of the location of library buildings. Amy Winslow,until recently librarian at Baltimore, has written, 14 "I believe you havede-emphasized the importance of parking facilities too much. What we needis good location plus parking. Of course if cost is prohibitive, location isof more importance. " The trouble is, cost is nearly always prohibitive, fora really strategic site costs far more than most persons can understand. Itis this compromising which too often ends with a basically unstrategic site.A report by a committee on central building use at Baltimore's Enoch PrattLibraryl 5 cited the substantial circulation drop there from 1949 to 1953and attributed it mainly to poor parking facilities. This report was used intwo other cities to justify taking poor sites where parking could be gener-ously provided. However, they ignored a 1954 postscript to the reportl6as well as subsequent developments which had shown that other influenceswere greatly responsible for the temporary decrease. By taking heed ofcentral services, plus better publicizing of them, use of the central library-9-

 

has shown a far greater increase from 1954 to 1957 than that of the twenty-seven branches, and greater than population growth, whereas parking hascontinued to be the same problem as before. Public funds have been votedfor more parking space next to the library.Harold L. Hamill, Los Angeles city librarian, also takes a positionof compromise: "Our experience leads us to disagree that the popular li-brary branch is best located where there are the largest number of pedes-trians. I have no up-to-date figures as to arrival on foot or by car, but... the number of automobile drivers increases dramatically. We advo-cate a compromise aimed at giving as much satisfaction as possible to bothpedestrians and drivers. We have busy branches to prove that locationscan be found not too far away to inconvenience pedestrians, but which givethe automobile rider a reasonably good break.... Not that unlimitedparking is the ideal, for such a location would ignore the pedestrian. "Phoenix's 1955 library is in an eight acre civic center, with parking for 200 cars, and about fifteen blocks from the old downtown section. Use of the library is reasonably heavy. But this is an unusual situation in that downtown is growing toward the library, the library is at an Important traffic intersection, and the civic center is being surrounded by stores. In Wayne County, west and southwest of Detroit, Librarian W. H. Kaiser writes that "a person primarily uses the library in the community of residence. Public transportation in satellite communities is practically non-existent. The second family car and shorter hours of work tend to makea visit to the library an activity divorced from other activities. Librariansat two active branches some two blocks from shopping centers say that notmany adults combine shopping with a library visit. " There may or may not be special factors present in the Wayne County situation, but typically "two blocks from a shopping center" (i. e. newly created centers some distance from previously congested retail areas) means a poor location for a library, since usually there is nothing of consequence nearby. We have also to allow for the general philosophy of some librarians as to the extent to which present non-users can be attracted to library use,either by publicity, better service, location, inviting design, or any other device. The almost unanimous response to question five in the poll con-ducted for this report is that continued effort will show definite results and that location is a major factor. More often than not, libraries which have made concerted efforts to increase adult book and information use have made substantial inroads on those previously unreached. This is not to say that in locating a library other factors can be overlooked; especially an adequate budget and a well-trained staff, or the character of population; obviously a prospective branch area composed predominantly of people wit the lowest economic and educational background will do the least reading.

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