A bay is a basic unit of

library A library is a collection of materials, books or media that are accessible for use and not just for display purposes. A library provides physical (hard copies) or digital access (soft copies) materials, and may be a physical location or a vir ...

shelving A shelf ( : shelves) is a flat, horizontal plane used for items that are displayed or stored in a home, business, store, or elsewhere. It is raised off the floor and often anchored to a wall, supported on its shorter length sides by brackets, o ...

. Bays are bookcases about wide, arranged together in rows. In modern practice,

books A book is a medium for recording information in the form of writing or images, typically composed of many pages (made of papyrus, parchment, vellum, or paper) bound together and protected by a cover. The technical term for this physical ar ...

are shelved from the top shelf to the bottom shelf in each bay, but in historic libraries where the shelves in a bay are not adjustable, it is common for the lower shelves to be spaced to accommodate taller books, with each book having a designated location. Rows consist of a number of bays, either single-sided or double-sided, connected to each other. The standard length of a row is five to six bays, but it is not uncommon to find rows seven bays wide or even wider. In some countries, a row is referred to as a 'stack' or a 'range'.

References

{{furniture-stub Furniture