The principal entrance to the library proper is on the 
western facade facing Forbes Field. Bronze doors open into 
a dignified hallway panelled with Tennessee marble. On 
the first floor are the lending department, the Department 
for Children, the Carnegie Library School and the adminis- 
“ration offices. 
In the adult and juvenile lending rooms, readers have 
free access to the shelves which contain about 85,000 repre- 
sentative books. The lending collection, as a whole, numbers 
over 400,000 volumes of which about 220.000 are shelved in 
the Central Library. 
Two broad marble staircases lead to the second floor. 
From one side of the second floor corridor opens the reference 
room, a place for quiet study and special assistance. Here 
expert help is given to students, club women, business and 
professional men, teachers, newspaper writers, etc. All 
general reference books, such as encyclopedias, dictionaries, 
biographical handbooks, etc., are collected in this room. 
At the south end of the corridor is the periodical and 
newspaper reading room, where over 1300 current magazines 
and newspapers are on file. The Department of Work with 
the Blind opens from the reference room. The Technology 
Department occupies rooms on the third floor. 
Ever since the library opened in 1895, special emphasis 
has been placed on the selection of books along industrial 
lines, with the result that Pittsburgh now has one of the 
finest collections of technical books in the country. The 
Technology Department in Pittsburgh was the first depart- 
ment of its kind ever organized in a public library. It 
publishes quarterly, a Technical Book Review Index, which 
's the only publication of its kind. 
The responsibility of the public library for encouraging a 
love of good reading in young people was recognized as 
2arly as 1898, when the Department for Children was first 
organized. There is no more important work in the library 
and none that pays better in far-reaching as well as im- 
mediate results. The department is concerned chiefly with 
the reading interests and literary training of children from 
the pre-school age to those fourteen or older. It aims to 
provide a wholesome form of recreation and amusement.