Library Essays; Papers Related to the Work of Public Libraries

by Arthur E. Bostwick

The public is apt to generalize from insufficient data. The user who is treated rudely or sullenly at the desk just once does not say, “I will make a record of this and of my subsequent experiences and see whether it is a usual thing or an abnormal one.” Not at all. He or she at once reports in conversation that the public library assistants are continuously rude and disagreeable, and the machinery is forthwith set in motion that makes or mars reputation. We may chafe at this; we may try to disregard it, but in the end we shall have to accept it as a fact of human nature. The public institution that wants to acquire that valuable asset, reputation, whether it is a reputation for kindliness, for helpfulness, for common sense, for scholarly acquirements, will have to make up its mind to be kind, helpful, sensible, and scholarly, not fifty per cent or seventy-five per cent of the time, but one hundred per cent of the time.

But entirely apart from such serious intervals of mal-employment as this, is it not probable that all of us are mal-employed for some little part of our time? Is it not probable, in other words, that our work would be improved if we should omit certain parts of it and do nothing at all instead? It is certain, for one thing, that no one could work continuously, day and night, without serious or fatal mal-employment. That is the reason why our working hours are limited to seven or eight in the twenty-four. Doubtless some workers are over worked and thus mal-employed in their hours of overwork—the sleepy railroad engineer, for instance, who misses a signal and sends a hundred passengers to eternity. We are doubtless free in the library from just this kind of mal-employment, except so far as it is forced upon us by assistants who work or play too strenuously outside of working hours. To go back to the assistant who is cross or careless for an hour every day; it is quite possible that she is in no condition for working during that hour; and this is not because the library hours of work are too long, but because she does not take needed rest outside of those hours. Sometimes this cannot be helped; often it is distinctly the worker’s fault, and it is surely putting the library in a false position to make it overwork its staff to their detriment and its own, just because the assistant puts in her best and freshest hours in work, or more often in amusement, outside the library.

Let me pause here to say that the reason we take vacations is to avoid the chance of this kind of mal-employment. The theory of the vacation is widely misunderstood. Some take it to be a period of amusement granted for services rendered. “I think I have earned a vacation,” they say. Others look upon it as play-time wrung from an unwilling employer—the more they can get the better off they are. Few realize that it is, or ought to be, simply an incident in the year’s work, an assignment to special duty, without which mal-employment would be more apt to result.

The mal-employed intervals of an otherwise valuable worker are often due to ignorance of conditions or sheer inability to meet them. In an interesting study of bricklaying one of the modern school of efficiency engineers found that most bricklayers kept their bricks too far from the point on the wall where they were to be laid, and that a long and wasteful carrying movement resulted. If the time occupied by this lost motion could have been eliminated and simply given to resting, even without doing any work, good would have resulted; these periods were hence intervals of mal-employment The engineer eliminated them easily and simply by bringing the pile of bricks within a few inches of the wall. It is easy to say, “Why, of course, any one would think of that!” Only no one ever did think of it. A large proportion of the most valuable inventions and discoveries have been of this character. Some one has remarked that in the earliest stage of an invention people say, “It won’t work;” later they say, “It may work, but it won’t be of any use.” Finally; when it is usefully running, they say, “What of it? Everybody has always known about it!” We don’t do these obvious things because they are elements in a series of acts that have grown to be habitual. We take care of them subconsciously. Also, they take up so little time individually that at first thought it seems foolish to try to improve or eliminate them. Suppose one does a useless, or even an injurious thing that lasts but three seconds? If he does it just once and then stops, it would doubtless be folly to change it. If, however, like the bricklayer’s useless and tiresome motions, it is repeated hundreds and thousands of times, the matter stands on quite a different footing. It is probable that all of us are habitually doing certain things in ways that involve, without our realizing it, elements of this kind, either mechanical or mental. Many things that we are doing by laborious repetition, wearying ourselves and using up valuable material, might be made to “do themselves” if we only knew how to utilize tendencies and forces that are all about us, unsuspected. One of the forces, for instance, is the desire of every person to do that which will give him pleasure. If the things we want done can be done in accordance with that desire, we can get others to do them for us. The classical example of the boys who whitewashed Tom Sawyer’s fence for him will occur to all. There is deep philosophy in this. I have known librarians to exhaust themselves by trying to get newspapers to publish what newspapers never would publish, while the reporters besiege others for items which they know will be just what they want. The rules of some libraries—both those for their public and those for their own assistants—all seem to run up hill—to “rub everyone the wrong way,” while those of others seem to get themselves obeyed without any trouble.

Sometimes the substitution of a mechanical appliance for brain-work is what we want. What, for instance, is the use of tiring one’s brain and impairing its usefulness for other needed work by forcing it to perform such a mechanical operation as adding a column of figures? Every library that can afford to own an adding machine ought to have one. The ones that can not afford it usually do not need it.

While we are discussing the mal-employment that does its harm by tiring out the worker, physically or mentally, and making him unfit for other work, we must not neglect to say a word about unnecessary talk. Nothing is so tiring to the brain as talk. I sometimes think that if we were all forced to do our work in silence we would get along more rapidly even if we had to communicate with each other in writing.

If a man were in charge of a piece of complicated machinery, and if he feared that something had got into it to clog it, while his knowledge of its elementary parts was still so slight that he could not tell which particular bit in all the moving mass was helping it on and which was hindering it, what would he do? He could remove the pieces, one by one, and watch the effect. If the machine refused to run without a certain piece, he would conclude that it was an absolutely necessary part; if it still ran, though with difficulty, he would conclude that the part, though not necessary, still promoted efficient operation; if removal resulted in no change at all, the piece was evidently either an unnecessary part, or an alien piece not so placed as to interfere with action. If the machine worked decidedly better after removal, the removed element must have been a clog—was, in fact, mal-employed.

How many of us feel like submitting to this test? If you should stop your work, would the library machine run along quite as usual? Or would it limp? Or would it refuse to run at all? Or would it—O distasteful thought!—would it jump ahead and function with greater speed and smoothness?

I believe in vacations; and yet I rather like to feel that the absence of an assistant on vacation makes a difference. And if every one in her department looks forward with fond expectation to her return and greets her with looks of satisfaction and sighs of relief, I cannot help feeling that she is a more integral part of the library machinery than if her return were generally regarded with indifference or were dreaded as a sort of calamity. When every one feels that she can work much better when Miss Blank is away, I am forced to inquire whether in truth Miss Blank is not a clog in the wheels instead of a cog, and whether a permanent vacation would not be the proper thing for her.

And how about your library as a whole? Suppose it should be leveled by a tornado, or swallowed up by an earthquake, or swept away by a flood? What effect would this have on the life of your town? Would the passer-by point to the ruins, or to the hole in the ground where once your library stood, with the same kind and amount of interest that he would show when viewing the stump of an old tree or the fragments of a blasted boulder? Or would every man, woman and child feel the loss? Would the teachers seek in vain for aid, the merchants for information, the workmen for data of use to them in their daily tasks?