On the left of the staircase is a room 65 feet by 35, used as a children's reading-room. It is entered from a lobby, called the Venetian Lobby from its scheme of decoration, and is shelved for about 3000 volumes. At present about 1300 volumes are in use, and these can be read in the room by children of any age. Tickets for home reading are not given to children under twelve.
The corresponding room on the right of the stair-case is called the delivery room, and in it books are obtained both for home reading and for use in the Bates Hall. It is approached through a lobby, decorated in the Pompeian style by Mr. E. E. Garnsey. A circular counter, 50 feet in length, separates the attendants from the public. On the left are doors communicating with the public cardcatalogue in Bates Hall. A card-catalogue of fiction and bulletin boards for the latest additions are placed in the delivery room itself. No books are shelved in this room, but all have to be obtained from the stack-rooms in the rear. To facilitate the issue, a row of numbered pneumatic tubes, which communicate with different floors and parts of the stack-rooms, is placed at the counter. The borrower's application slip is enclosed in a carrier in one of the tubes, and so despatched to the nearest point to the book required. Each storey of the stack is fitted with a miniature cable railway track of eight-inch gauge, and book waggons (Fig. 115) to run upon it. Each stack has three stations, placed at convenient intervals, and two girls are employed to act as "runners" on each floor, to
