About those Antebellum Bookcases

Earlier this fall I blogged some about a marvelous bookcase (another view of its right upright is to the right) in the Thomas Cobb house over in Athens.  What really interests me about that bookcase is the speculation of what books were on it.  And, of course, I'm always interesting in drawing inferences about readers from the books they own and use.  (We can get some idea by reading Cobb's An Inquiry into the Law of Negro Slavery, where he cited dozens of books he drew on in creating his proslavery position.)

Perhaps, though, I should focus more on the nature of the bookcase.  I've recently been reading an 1859 book about libraries in the United States by William Rhees, Manual of Public Libraries Institutions, and Societies.   If you love libraries, this is a great read.  Great statistical data on the number of books in a bunch of libraries around the country–though I'm mighty skeptical of some of the libraries' reports of their volume count.  

But here's what I find really cool: Rhees has instructions on bookcases!  Check out these instructions:

Oak, or well-seasoned deal, without veneering, staining, or other deceptive process, should be employed for cases.  If it be determined that the book-cases shall be wholly uninflammable, the shelves may be made of enamelled slate, and the other portions of galvanized and perforated rolled iron.  Whatever the material, the shelves should be movable.  The cases should everywhere be perfectly flush, and without any sort of protruding ornament near the shelves, or of cavity at the sides. There should always be a space between the back of the cases and the inside of the external walls against which they are to stand, and a plinth of at least six inches between the lowest shelf and the level of the floor.  It will also be found both advantageous and economical to make the framework of the various presses of equal dimensions, as much as may be, so that the shelves should be mutually transferable, and even the presses themselves, should occasion arise for their removal.

In estimating the extent of shelving which it may be necessary to provide, we may fairly calculate that in an ordinary library, such as would now be formed, a space two feet high and two feet wide will, on the average, contain about thirty-five volumes; or, in other words, it may be estimated roughly that every thousand volumes in the library will require about one hundred and ten square feet of shelving.

All shelves intended for choice and richly-bound books should be covered with leather, and especially such as are intended for books of large sizes. … 

Those instructions are drawn from an English book, Edward Edwards' Memoirs of Libraries (and apparently in turn from the Encyclopedia Britannica, too, though I've not had a chance to examine that volume yet.)