SERVICE SYSTEMS IN LIBRARIES
I should be understood better, perhaps, if I said “Civil service in the library”; but the civil service is so called merely in distinction to the military service, and there can be no military service in the library, although the uniform of certain janitors and messengers may appear, at first sight, to give me the lie. Every library, of course, must have some plan of service, more or less systematic. This may or may not be subject to the regulations of the state or city civil service. I have no desire to dwell here on the question of the desirability of such connection; but I cannot refrain from saying, at the risk of losing all of my civil service-reform friends, that I regard the present methods of bringing about appointment for merit only as makeshifts, well designed to defeat the efforts of politicians and others who wish to see appointments made for other reasons, but necessary only so long as those efforts are likely to continue. I shall doubtless be told that they are likely to continue indefinitely, and therefore that I have given away my whole case. To show that this is not so, we have only to point to a large number of libraries in connection with which there is no such effort, and in which safeguards against it are absolutely unnecessary. I do not know why politics has not invaded these institutions, but I know that it has not. During the past sixteen years I have been connected with four large libraries, and I am in a position to say not only that no political appointment was made in them during my connection, but that no such appointment was ever attempted or suggested. There is absolutely no reason why the protection of “civil-service” regulation should be thrown over these libraries, and every reason why they should be free from the harassing and embarrassing petty annoyances and restrictions that are inseparable from such regulation.
Much as I honor the advocates of civil-service reform, and applaud what they have accomplished in the way of furthering a real merit system, I submit that a further step in advance may be taken when we have heads of municipal departments as unlikely to make political appointments as the average librarian is, and as free from pressure to make such appointments as are the librarians of a large number of our best institutions. I regard that as the best system, therefore, in which an appointing officer or body, sincerely desirous of making appointments for merit only, is perfectly free to make such appointments in any way that seems proper; and as only the second-best system that in which the appointing power, unwilling to make appointments for merit, is forced to do so, as far as may be, by the supervision and control of a body created for the purpose. So long as we have unwilling municipal officers, we must endure this second-best plan, of course; but librarians are rarely of this kind, though they may be unfortunately in the power of those who are. It has been my good fortune to formulate a scheme of service for each of the four libraries to which I have referred, and these schemes, with necessary modifications, are still in satisfactory use. The first, for the New York Free Circulating Library, was made in 1896; the last, for the St. Louis Public Library, in 1910. Some were hampered by the necessity of adapting them to municipal regulation, while others were quite free; and other local conditions imposed differences upon them, but they depended, in the main, on the same principles and were carried out in much the same way.
I have numerous requests for information on this subject and for advice upon methods of grading library staffs, with regulation of promotions, increases of salary, etc. Possibly the best way to answer these may be to give a brief account of the way in which the work was done in these four cases.
It has been assumed by some that, as every good librarian desires to have these matters systematically regulated, regulation by a city civil service commission will be as good as any, and that a man who wishes to have a system of his own and keep it under his own control is unreasonable and foolish. A non-professional body, however, cannot, even with professional expert advice, satisfactorily regulate the employment of professionals for professional work. This point has been so often insisted upon and elaborated that those, who do not now appreciate its validity will never do so. Every good librarian will wish to create machinery to put the right man in the right place in his force, and to drop him out if he goes wrong; but it must be his own machinery, not that of someone else, and must be designed to aid him, not to hamper him.
My attention was drawn to the necessity of a more systematic plan of service in the New York Free Circulating Library on assuming charge in 1895. The library had been hampered by insufficiency of funds and had been obliged to supplement assistants of ability and experience with others who had been employed simply because they could be obtained at low salaries. Promotion, where it was distinctly indicated, was for merit, ascertained simply by the librarian’s opinion; and salary increases were made very largely for length of service. An effort was made at the outset to regulate admission to the force and advancement within it. The features of examination and of grades distinguished by letters were borrowed from the Boston Public Library. A department head, who had been giving private instruction, had by the board’s permission placed some of her pupils in the library for practice work. This seemed an excellent opportunity to train future assistants; so the private class was turned into a library training class and the pupils into apprentices, their teacher being retained as such and properly compensated. The library force was divided into three grades, A, B and C; to which a fourth, D was afterwards added. The first two were indicated by the fact that the library consisted of six coordinate branches, each with its librarian-in-charge and her first assistant. All the former were graded as A and the latter as B. Class A thus necessarily became limited in number, depending on the number of branches, and B would have been similarly limited if it had not been made to include also all the high-grade assistants—all capable of assignment at any time to the work of a deputy librarian of a branch. Class C was then a remainder class, including all other members of the library staff. It soon appeared, however, that the line of demarkation between those members of Class B who were first assistant librarians and those who were not was much more distinct than that between B and C. B was accordingly limited to first assistants; the remnant was called C, and the old C became D. The old feeling that seniority should be considered was deferred to by arranging for automatic increases of salary within the grades at specified intervals. Janitors and messengers remained quite outside this arrangement.
It was provided that no one should be promoted from grade to grade without the passage of an examination; but that passage simply placed the successful candidate on a list of eligibles, and promotion from this list was made by considering personal fitness, character of work and immediate conditions. Qualifications for the different grades differed, but in quantity and advancement, rather than in quality, all coming under the heads of literature, language, general information and library economy.
This plan was formulated in consultation with the library committee, and was adopted as part of the rules of the library by the board. The committee differed somewhat on the seniority increases within grades, which were finally retained, and considered it of great importance to emphasize work and personal fitness. Methods of including marks for these in the final standing of the candidate were considered, but the difficulty of doing so led to the adoption of the plan as stated.
It was decided to give every member of the staff the right to demand an examination for promotion on the expiration of three years’ service in one grade, and to admit others by special order. Advancement proved to be necessarily so rapid, however, that no one who had any chance of passing the examination ever remained three years in a grade, and this clause proved practically inoperative.
Of course, many passed and were placed on the eligible list for promotion who had no chance of advancement for reasons connected with work or personality. This caused dissatisfaction which it was sought to mitigate by recognizing presence on the eligible list by increase of salary to the grade limit, provided this had not been already attained. Even so, however, it continued to exist.