ADMINISTRATION OF THE CATALOG DEPARTMENT FROM A LIBRARIAN'S POINT OF VIEW
In the reorganization of our libraries, in the adoption of modern progressive and simplified methods, in the effort to develop and improve service to the public, the catalog department has tended to be drawn out of relation to the other departments, to become in a way isolated, and as a result its efficiency has been impaired. The attention of librarians has been given to other phases of library activities and therefore they know less about the catalog department than any other. Undoubtedly the technicalities of the cataloging process make it most difficult for librarians to grapple with, but all the more carefully should we consider ways and means of increasing the efficiency of the process, relating the work more closely to changes in other departments, and studying methods of possible simplification of the routine mechanical work that seems to have largely increased of late.
In one of Mr. Carlton's reports to his board of trustees, he uses these words: "It has often seemed to me that in library administration the catalog department was much like the police department in municipal administration. It is frequently under investigation; it is constantly being reformed; its defects are felt in many other departments; and its heads are always changing as one after another breaks down or fails to achieve impossible results."
Surely such an unsatisfactory and unwholesome condition is not without remedy.
If I can not presume to submit a definite plan of reformation, perhaps I may at least attempt to suggest possible lines of investigation for each librarian to pursue.
1. The catalog room.
In the modern organization of work, the first care is to provide work-rooms in which the highest efficiency may be maintained. Scientific investigation shows the extravagance of conditions which retard speed and multiply unnecessary motions, which do not provide adequate light and air and proper colors to conserve strength, arrest fatigue and support the energies. In planning buildings we properly endeavor to bring the catalog department into the closest possible relation with the order department, the book stack and the reference department, to save steps which mean time and money. My observation is that frequently there is not the same care exercised in planning the room itself as there is in locating it. Often it is too small, so that work clogs up, books must be shifted too often (an expensive process), too many corners must be turned in getting about the room and the assistants impede one another's progress. On the other hand, a room may be so large that time is wasted in getting about it. To be sure this is a rare fault. I have seen cataloging rooms admirably placed for convenience of access to stack, reference room and order department, and really adequate in size, but so devoid of light and air that even a hardened devotee of our reading rooms would fear to enter such a place. Plenty of windows, if possible on two sides of a room, and ample indirect artificial lighting are just as important for the efficiency of the catalog department as like facilities for the public reading rooms.
2. Relation of catalog department to other departments.
When friction develops between two departments (of course it never does; this is merely a hypothetical case), my observation is that the catalog department is pretty likely to be a party to the affair. Why? Simply because as organization within libraries has developed, the catalog department has been left more and more to its own devices. In the departments working with the public, the tendency has been to complexity of organization, perhaps, but still to elimination of detail, simplification of method, the sacrifice of theory to practicality that the public may have the feeling of freedom and ease and be given the quickest and best service with the least red tape. During this process the catalog department has continued to develop theory unchecked by daily strenuous contact with the busy borrower, to increase routine and mechanical work, still opaque to the searchlight of scientific investigation from outside the department. You need publicity, but all you ever get is pages and pages of blasts against the poor old battle-scarred, but more-or-less-still-in-the-ring accession book, which in nine cases out of ten belongs to another department anyway. The illuminating power of publicity for the devious ways of cataloging and the development of a better spirit of co-operation, are to be obtained perhaps best of all by the establishment of entirely feasible definite relations between the departments. As Miss Winser will develop this topic, I will leave it here, simply remarking that in my experience the opinions of one department about the organization and detail of another department are frequently of the utmost value, but rarely the opinions of other departments about the catalog department, whose problems are not understood.
3. Organization of the department.
(1) General type of organization.
The development of the modern elaborate systems of scientific management in the various forms of industry has for the most part superseded the best type of ordinary management known as the "initiative and incentive system." Under the old system success depends almost entirely upon the initiative of the workmen, whereas, under scientific management, or task management, a complete science for all the operations is developed, and the managers assume new burdens, new duties and responsibilities. Having developed the science, they scientifically select and then train, teach and develop the workmen. The managers co-operate with the men to insure all the work being done in accordance with the principles of the science which has been developed. The work and responsibility are almost equally divided between the management and the workmen. The combination of the initiative of the workmen and the new types of work done by the management makes scientific management so much more efficient than the old way.
"All the planning which under the old system was done by the workman, as a result of his personal experience, must of necessity under the new system be done by the management in accordance with the laws of the science."[4] One type of man is needed to plan ahead and an entirely different type to execute the work. Perhaps the most prominent single element in modern scientific management is the task idea. The work of each workman is fully planned in advance by the management and the man receives complete written instructions, describing in detail the task he is to accomplish, as well as the means to be used in doing the work. And the work planned in advance in this way constitutes a task which is to be solved by the joint effort of the workman and the management. This task specifies not only what is to be done, but how it is to be done and the exact time allowed for doing it.
[4] F. W. Taylor, "Principles of scientific management."
It is said that "the most important object of both the workmen and the management should be the training and development of each individual in the establishment, so that he can do (at his fastest pace and with the maximum of efficiency) the highest class of work for which his natural abilities fit him," but it is nevertheless true that to some extent scientific management contemplates the selection of the workman best fitted for one particular
task and keeping him at that task because he can do that better than any other. Within the narrow domain of his special work, he is given every encouragement to suggest improvements both in methods and in implements. In the past the man has been first; under modern methods the system is first.
I have attempted to summarize some of the principles of so-called scientific management, because in the organization of our cataloging work definite principles of any kind of management have rarely been evident throughout, and if we are to observe accurately the system of this department, and study it with a view to possible improvement, we must test its work by some existing scientific standards.
The science of cataloging has been pretty fully developed, and at least its technique is taught in our professional schools. Therefore it may be assumed that we are now reasonably conforming to the first ideals of scientific management when we select with due care for the headship of our catalog departments and for the more important positions, those trained in the principles of the science. I personally believe that the principles of scientific management should be actively employed by the head cataloger in the definite planning of the work of the individual, in the testing of the speed and accuracy of the individual for a special task, and in the insistence that speed for each task shall definitely conform to careful but easily made tests of the amount of time that should be consumed in performing the task. There are plenty of results of experiments in other lines of work which show that the output is increased, the cost lessened, by the constant planning and supervision and co-operation of the head of the department, and consequent abandonment by him of a corresponding amount of special detail work of his own that he heretofore may have done.
But now I must register an emphatic exception to the application of the exact principles of scientific management to a catalog department.
I believe the principles of scientific management as developed for the organization of industry and business, should undergo a distinct change or be abandoned entirely in their application to one most important phase of the organization of a catalog department. Scientific management does consider the health and comfort and freedom from fatigue and efficiency of the individual, but always with a view to the effect upon a particular task and upon increased output at reduced cost. In other words the emphasis is placed on the task, not at all on the broad development of the individual. In library work, human sympathy, a broad point of view, the fullest possible development of personality are of the utmost importance; esprit de corps, the spirit of loyalty and co-operation are of more importance than a particular task. I assume that needs no argument. Scientific management, fully applied, would, it seems to me, defeat this vital purpose of library organization, and would more effectually differentiate and isolate the catalog department than is already the case in many libraries.
This leads to some illustrations of my meaning by
(2) Some practical considerations of the organization.
I do entirely believe in a distinct and complete organization of a catalog department, not in the system some libraries use in having a department head, but without assistants definitely and wholly assigned to the one department. It is my observation that to insure quick, accurate, consecutive and thoroughly efficient work, not only must the department head devote practically her whole time to the one job, but at least enough assistants also, to insure continuity of work. I am not in favor of the head of the department being part of the time assistant in the children's room or even in the reference room. Such a plan is altogether too extravagant. The manager of a department needs to give undivided attention to the supervision of the work of the department. The head of the department is constantly brought directly in touch with the general administration of the library and with other department heads, and a possible tendency to narrowed point of view is thus checked to some extent. There are also some assistants who are naturally fitted to the work of the catalog department and not at all to meeting the public. If we secure an assistant evidently suited for catalog work, but for no other, we should bend all our energies to making her the most efficient possible cataloger, and not deprive the catalog department of her constant services in order to make a vain attempt to develop other sides of her personality and give the public poor service in the process. In my judgment, in a library cataloging from 25,000 to 35,000 volumes a year, a head cataloger, a first assistant, and probably at least two other assistants should give their whole time to the department and so form the backbone of the organization. To this part of it the principles of scientific management may be thoroughly applied.
My idea of the necessity for divergence from those principles comes when we consider the need for the development of some members of the cataloging staff by other sides of library experience, and also when we consider the importance of mutual understanding and co-operation between the departments. All librarians experience difficulty in obtaining assistant catalogers because a candidate is very often reluctant to devote herself wholly to the routine operations of the catalog department. In many such cases, it would be possible to secure an excellent part-time assistant for the catalog department, if we would offer work for part of the day in a department dealing with the public. In this way we would achieve a double purpose. The experience of all librarians, I am confident, will indicate the inestimable advantage to the point of view of the catalog department and to the catalog itself if some one of considerable importance in the department gives a part of each day to reference work, and another assistant a part of each day to the loan department. I think it is not so important that a cataloger devote some time to work with children, and it is also true that such an arrangement is rarely of value to the children's department, where special qualities and training are all-important. On the other hand, it is desirable that someone with the training and experience of a children's librarian, give to the catalog department time for the assignment of subject headings for the children's catalog. The work of the catalog and order departments is most closely related and yet it is my experience that misunderstanding between those departments is not infrequent. An assistant whose time is divided between the two should and does work to the advantage of both departments. With the exception of the one representative from the children's department, I do not believe that the possible advantage gained by having assistants from the departments which deal with the public give part time to cataloging, by any means equals the loss of efficiency attending the change from one manager to another or the loss in the work itself, for it is unusual that one assistant should do equally high-class work in two such distinct fields. I know that some say that the majority of really good desk assistants possess the education, the clear and discriminating mind, the accuracy and resourcefulness of the good cataloger and are of value in the catalog department. Also it is true that the suitability of each assistant for each department would of course be considered when interchanges are arranged. Nevertheless it is my observation that excellent desk assistants ordinarily can do well only the merest clerical work in a catalog department, and usually they do not appreciate the accuracy and minute care required in cataloging work. Certainly it is extravagant to use a part of the time of a presumably fairly-well-paid, good desk or reference assistant for merely mechanical work in the catalog department, which otherwise would be done by a cheaper grade of service than the better grade of catalog assistants. Also the special care and extra time wasted by head catalogers in revising the work of such assistants is an expense worth consideration.
4. Cost of cataloging.
Many complaints are heard from librarians of the seemingly excessive cost of cataloging. Few practical suggestions seem to have been made for reducing costs, except in the elimination of some details, such as accession books. Since I understand a committee is investigating this whole question, I have not attempted to obtain any statistical information. In the few fairly large libraries whose estimates of the cost of the process have come to my attention, the estimated cost of purchasing, accessioning, and cataloging a book, including labelling, gilding, card filing, and everything necessary to secure a book and prepare it for use, ranges from 30 cents to about 65 cents. These cost estimates vary, not only because of differences in the elaboration or simplicity of the processes, but also because of the difference in the character of the books added, large numbers of duplicates for schools, branches, etc., being more easily and cheaply handled than separate new titles.
There can be little question that scientific management, properly used, will reduce the costs of cataloging work. Adequate planning and supervision of all processes by the head cataloger, the classifier and others in charge of divisions of the work, can make for speed. I am convinced that we do not really know the maximum length of time which an assistant should be allowed to keep at one certain task. An assistant typewriting shelf-list cards should do rapid work for perhaps three hours. After that a measure of fatigue makes change of occupation advisable for the individual, and economical for the department. Slight fatigue from typewriting will not, however, impair efficiency in a different sort of work. A point worth considering here is, that the change in the occupation of a higher-grade assistant in order not to impair efficiency, should not mean time given to a lower or more mechanical grade of work. That is extravagance. Impending mental fatigue does not mean that mental processes are to be abandoned. Just as much rest is obtained, and efficiency is really increased, by simple change of the mental groove. Here the advocate of the general exchange of assistants between departments might say that the advisable thing to do is to send the assistant to another department. In most cases I believe that such a change is a mistake, because a change from one department to another means too great a break in the continuity of management in two departments. One manager can plan more effectively for the entire working time of an individual than two managers can plan for the two halves.
The development of library schemes of service, branches, stations, children's rooms, work with schools, has all added enormously to the routine and mechanical processes of cataloging. More shelf-lists, more catalogs, and all sorts of differentiation in the processes suitable to the special need have multiplied details faster than most librarians realize. It is this tremendous complexity which has worn out head catalogers, increased costs, and made administrators clamor for the elimination of unnecessary detail, without having a real understanding of what the detail is and is for.
Deterioration in the cataloging process will injure other departments, but undoubtedly most libraries have superfluous refinements that could well be omitted with economy in cataloging, and no loss to the chief end of all our work.
It is a temptation to consider carefully the methods which might save expenses in the cataloging process, but I can take time only to make brief reference to some of them, most of these having been frequently discussed at length before.
(a) Careful planning of catalog room for convenience, to save all unnecessary motions.
(b) Scientific supervision of tasks to produce greatest speed without undue fatigue.
(c) Stopping the publication of many monthly bulletins. Some bulletins of the larger and certain particular libraries are of inestimable value to other libraries. Most of these bulletins are printed from the linotype slugs used in printing their own catalog cards, and consequently the labor is minimized. The bulletins of most libraries, I firmly believe, are of no possible use to other libraries, and the material in them would be much more read by the public if published in the newspapers, as it should be in any case, and if the special lists, which are the most useful part of many bulletins, were printed on a multigraph, instead of being buried in forbidding bulletins that no able-bodied ordinary man in his senses could be driven to read.
(d) Use of Library of Congress cards. Some people say they do not save time. I recommend those people to recatalog a library without them, also to attempt to get along without them for a while for current additions. To the best of my knowledge they do save money, and I know they save wear and tear on typewriter machines and ribbons, and they save temper, which is nervous energy and worth while saving. If you don't believe that last read Goldmark on "Fatigue and efficiency" and then you will. Besides, Library of Congress cards look better than typewritten cards and have more durability, since typewritten cards rub and fade and have to be rewritten too frequently.
(e) What real objection can there be to simplifying the cards you write yourselves? It does not matter if they are not consistent with Library of Congress cards. No living borrower would know whether they were consistent or not, and no dead one would matter. Besides if variety is the spice of life, consistency is the vice of it. Nobody but a librarian ever worried about being consistent. I regret I can't even except the clergy.
(f) Omitting book numbers for fiction saves a vast amount of time and sacrifices little. They do not add beauty, and they cause endless trouble and expense without due compensation.
(g) As to the accession book: I mention this because everyone does, and therefore, lack the courage to pass it without remark. Some library reports say that they save the time of one assistant by doing away with it. The fact that practically all of them say it, no matter what size the library in question is, makes one suspicious. I think they are just copying each other's reports, which is not fair. If, however, the accession book is abandoned, and the bill-date, source and cost for each copy of a book are added to a shelf-list card which contains author, title, publisher and perhaps date of publication, much writing is saved and all necessary information is preserved. In the Minneapolis public library, which makes the closest estimate I have seen, four hours per 150 books are said to be saved by such a method. No small matter! It is my personal opinion that the accession book is superfluous in a library which is completely cataloged and shelf-listed.
(h) An interesting change due to the study of motions is recommended in the procedure for shelf-listing by the Minneapolis public library: "Formerly one person marked the call number on the back of the title page, and assigned the copy letter, then the book was taken by another assistant who marked the book slip, the pocket and the label. This meant two people handling the book, the second doing only the mechanical work of copying; hence the work must be revised by someone else, or many mistakes occurred in the work of even our best markers. Now, the shelf-lister, who knows the meaning of the number and has it already in her mind, marks all books as she lists them, and the work goes through faster and more accurately."
(i) Trying to save money by omitting the yearly inventory, particularly for open shelves, is a mistake, I believe. One does not save money by gaining discredit for failing to keep track of his wares.
(j) It is doubtless superfluous to recommend throwing away antiques, like withdrawal books.
(k) The use of the multigraph for writing catalog and shelf-list cards is certainly economy if the number of catalogs is large enough to require pretty large duplication. The shifting of much mechanical work to a less highly-paid class of assistant and the saving in revision of all but the first copy of a card, are distinct gains.
(l) There are doubtless many mechanical devices which will be adopted to advantage in cataloging in the next few years. Many machines of different sorts have greatly changed bookkeeping methods, making the bookkeeper an initiative force in administration of business houses, and certainly similar economy systems will be developed for the cataloger.
5. Efficiency of the individual in the department.
The routine work of cataloging brings fatigue sooner than an occupation involving more variety, although the effects of this form of fatigue may not cumulate so rapidly. It is consequently of special importance that the executive pay particular attention to the application of the principles of scientific management to the efficiency of the individual. The utmost care must be taken that energy shall be carefully directed and not be over-expended. Unduly prolonged attention to a particular kind of work resulting in the long run in nervous exhaustion is a familiar phenomenon of cataloging. Dr. Richardson says that for correction and verification work, two hours a day is the maximum for highest efficiency. My observation is that continuous work at the typewriter should not exceed three hours. Although filing is largely mechanical work, it is also very wearying because of the decided monotony of it, and there is a marked tendency to tire quickly. Since errors rapidly increase with fatigue, the service is directly injured, as well as indirectly through the ultimate effect on the health of the individual.
In general the carefully trained assistant not only knows how to go about his work with more dispatch, with less need for supervision, with more real efficiency, but also with less wear and tear on his nervous energy. An added argument for the economy of paying higher salaries to obtain adequately trained assistants! I have had excellent opportunity to observe the effect of the graded salary on the efficiency of a cataloging staff. The increased interest, the new energy, and the altered spirit are marked when a graded service is installed, particularly when it is realized that efficiency, as well as length of service, is considered.
It is not necessary to discuss recreation in the library, as the subject relates to the catalog department no differently than it does to the others. The same may be said about vacations, but in passing I should like to say that I agree entirely with Dr. Bostwick's idea of them as assignments to special work. It seems to me that assistants should be required to obtain the approval of the executive to the plans for their vacations. I have taken vacations myself which were certain to do me no good, and consequently do my work harm, and it does seem that I ought not to expect pay for such a misuse of the library's time. The change in the hours of service in the circulation department of the New York public library from 42½ hours a week to 40 hours has caused widespread approval. I wonder if anyone has called attention to the fact that slight changes in climate affect the ability of the individual to work a certain number of hours. For instance, I know from experience that it is possible to work longer without discomfort in an even climate, not subject to extremes of either heat or cold, than it is in the climate of New York. There are certain parts of the country where it takes less energy to work 42 hours per week throughout the year than it does to work 40 hours correspondingly in New York.
With more attention to light, air, attractive appearance and convenient arrangement of room, avoidance of fatigue in spite of rapid work or monotony, sensible hours, some degree of variety in work, sane vacations, some outdoor exercise during each day, decent pay on a graded basis, the efficiency record of the cataloging staff in many a library should be raised, their organization held intact, and their humor and good-humor have some chance to appear.
The subject was continued by Dr. ARTHUR E. BOSTWICK, of the St. Louis public library, who spoke as follows:
From the administrative standpoint the library life of a book is divided very distinctly into two periods, that before it is placed on the shelves and that after it is so placed. The first period, embracing selection, order, receipt, classification, cataloging and mechanical preparation, is strictly preliminary to the second and would have no reason for being except for the second. The public recognizes the second chiefly and knows of the first vaguely and inadequately. To the library, and especially to that part of the staff engaged in the operations proper to it, it bulks large.
The librarian of a large library often finds himself obliged to act, in a measure, as the public's representative, taking the point of view of the thousands of readers, rather than of those who operate the machinery directly under his own control. To one who is actually handling the levers and pulleys, the machine often seems to be the thing. The general administrator, somewhat removed from this direct contact, is better able to see it as it is—a means to an end.
Hence to the chief librarian, this period of preparation must always be a cause of anxiety. Its cost and its duration especially worry him. While his training and experience do not permit him to minimize its importance, he would like to make it as cheap and as short as possible. The reader wants his book, and he wants it now—as soon as he sees the notice of it in the paper. The departments of the library that have to do with its preparation are anxious only that this preparation shall be thorough, realizing that on it depends the usefulness of the book in the second, or public, period of its life. The impatient reader sees no reason for any delay. The co-operating departments see every reason. The librarian sees the reasons, too, but it is his business, to a certain extent, to take the reader's part, and insist that the book's preparation shall not be so thorough that by the time of its completion two-thirds of the necessity for any preparation at all shall have passed, never to return.
It therefore becomes an important part of his duty to hurry up the work of preparation, and it is my experience that this duty becomes difficult of performance, wellnigh impossible, when the work and responsibility of preparation devolves upon two or more departments. It has sometimes seemed to me that a majority of my working hours were occupied in settling disputes between the order and catalog departments, in futile endeavors to fit the responsibility for delays upon one or the other and to decide which of them, and when, was telling the truth about the other. It was thus with a feeling of relief, although somewhat of surprise, that I found myself four years ago at the head of a library where the preparatory stage of the book's life is entirely in charge of one department, a plan involving of course the consolidation of the order and catalog work.
My four years' experience has convinced me that in many cases this plan may be the solution of some of the librarian's problems. It does not do away with delay: it does not make the library staff assume the reader's point of view, or even the librarian's; but it does reduce the number of department heads with whom the librarian has to deal in his "hurry-up" campaign, and it does unify a responsibility whose division continually causes him trouble and vexation. That we so seldom see the combination of this work arises from the fact that the various stages of the book's preparation are rarely looked upon as parts of a whole. The ordering of books is regarded as a business in itself, requiring its own kind of expert knowledge and completed when the book has been delivered and the bills checked off. The cataloger, again, is proud of the degree of technical perfection to which he has brought the multiplicity of detail in his work. He has a high sense of its necessity in the library's scheme. Few see that both these processes, together with mechanical operations of pasting, labelling and lettering on which everyone looks down, are simply stages in the work of preparation, through which a book must pass before it becomes an integral part of a modern library. These are not separate departments of work, one completed before the next is begun; they are interwoven and interdependent in all sorts of ways. Books can not be ordered properly without a catalog. Books can not be cataloged properly without information necessary in the operation of ordering. It becomes a question of library policy, then, whether these operations may not be combined, and the considerations adduced above form at least a strong argument for such combination.
I have purposely dwelt on this matter from the standpoint of a general administrator and have therefore not gone into details, which it will be easy for you to obtain if you desire them.
In closing, let me say that I believe catalogers to have in a high degree that devotion to their task and that skill and interest in working out its details, that have made the American public library what it is. What they need to guard against is the aloofness arising from the separate and technical character of that work. Many of them realize, and all of them should do so, the fact that the catalog is made for the reader; not the reader for the catalog. We may try to train our readers to use our catalogs, but to the end of time we shall still have to deal with the unintelligent, the careless and the captious, and we must try to adapt our catalogs more or less to them. The cataloger may have to break cherished rules, to throw tradition overboard, to act in many ways that will scandalize his profession. Contact with as many other departments of the library as possible—realization of his position as a cog wheel in contact with other cogs, will help on the good work.
The following paper written by Miss BEATRICE WINSER, of the Newark free public library, was read in her absence by Miss Agnes Van Valkenburgh, of the library school of the New York public library: