How large should libraries be?
In many areas of manufacturing, commerce, and engineering, matters of size and scale are of central interest. One might reasonably have expected the same to be true in librarianship. After all, every increment in size costs money. Yet, beyond a general belief that bigger is better, the literature of librarianship is almost silent on the topic and what little there is does not get one very far and, one suspects, is little read. 5 In brief, the literature is very limited on what one might have expected to have been a central concern. There may be circumstances in which library books ought to be relegated to less accessible storage (or even discarded) and there may be circumstances in which staffing ought to be increased relative to (and even at the expense of) acquisitions. A change in size is a change in kind and some restructuring of the pattern or provision, such as decentralization or automation, may become desirable. However, after all appropriate restructuring, the acquisition of o
