ABSTRACT
It is interesting that one man, almost by accident, and with all good intentions, did so much to stereotype, indeed to freeze, librarianship into a pattern from which it has not yet entirely escaped. Andrew Carnegie, a Pittsburgh steel baron of Scottish descent, literally gave millions of dollars to construct library buildings so that every community that wanted one could have one. He employed architects who, in the interests of economy, developed a standard building design, or rather seven designs, which permitted the sort of assemblyline production of library structures that took place in the first part of the century. Paradoxically, the Carnegie design also produced a condition in which library activities were confined to a space that was seldom entirely appropriate to them. The Carnegie design, while useful, did much to stultify the development of imaginative library service before World War II.
