It is not absolutely necessary, of course, to operate this scheme from a department store, neither is greater distance an absolute bar to frequent deliveries. I believe that this kind of long-distance service is well worth the attention of librarians.
And, in general, I believe that a realization that all long-distance service has its good points may do good by inducing us to dwell on those points and to try to make them of more influence in our work.
CONFLICTS OF JURISDICTION IN LIBRARY SYSTEMS[14]
At bottom, a departmental system in a large institution is simply an outcome of the fact that its head requires aid in administration. At first, perhaps, he can actually do everything with his own hand; next he requires helpers, but he can oversee them all; finally, he must have overseers, who are the only ones with whom he deals directly and for whom he naturally classifies the work and divides it among them accordingly. This is not merely a symbolical or fanciful account of such a development. There are plenty of heads of institutions, educational, commercial and industrial, who have personally seen every stage of it—who are now administering a complicated system of departments where they once did everything themselves. In particular, there are now librarians, at the head of great libraries, who began library work by performing, or at least overseeing directly, the elementary acts of which library operation may be taken to consist, and who have watched such a simple system of superintendence develop year by year into something complex.
Such a development, as I have said, is naturally based on some kind of classification. If one could sit down and, foreseeing the growth of his institution for years to come, settle upon the way in which that growth should be cared for, his classification might possibly be more logical and workable than most classifications now are. The best of them are wofully imperfect, as no one knows better than we librarians. And when division into classes proceeds pari passu with growth, we are necessarily bothered with that troublesome thing—cross-classification. As our institution grows, one direction of growth and a corresponding set of conditions and needs comes into the foreground after another, and our basis of classification is apt to change accordingly.
In the library, for instance, territorial expansion has frequently claimed the right of way. It has been evident that wide regions within the municipality were not reached by the library’s activities; hence the establishment of branches—practically classification on a regional or territorial basis. Next, perhaps, some other need is pushed forward—say, the necessity for special care given to the children of the community. Here is a non-territorial basis for classification, founded only upon the age of the library’s users. These are not classes and sub-classes, but are entirely different primary systems of classification, whose dividing lines cross and do not run parallel. A man who should sit down and try to evolve, at first hand, some sort of classification of library work, might adopt one or the other, but not both. In one case he might divide his city into districts, with district superintendents and local librarians under each; in the other, he might divide his users by ages and tastes and have a superintendent for each. In neither case would there be cross-classification, with its over-lapping classes and consequent interferences of jurisdiction.
But this is not the way that things work out. The librarian finds it necessary to have his geographical subdivisions and also those based on age, and he adopts others also as they appear desirable, without much regard for the logic of classification. If he does take it into account, he feels that the troubles resulting from conflicts of jurisdiction will be more easily dealt with than those consequent upon a refusal to respond to the present demands of the work. Also—and this is an important factor—conflicts of jurisdiction, no matter how inevitable, are in the future, and the present demands of the work look vastly larger and press with insistence. Is there any wonder that he does what lies immediately before him and lets the future take care of itself?
Unfortunately, the future always does take care of itself very well indeed, and presents itself to demand a reckoning at the appointed time. The library, for instance, that has its branches for different regions and its children’s room in each gets along well enough so long as its cross-classification of work exists only on paper. But the time comes when departmental organization must begin, and this must be based on the classification. There may be a superintendent of branches and a superintendent of children’s work, or the branch librarians may report to the librarian directly, or there may be other dispositions with other duties and names. In any case, a children’s room at a branch library necessarily finds itself in two departments, under two jurisdictions and under two heads. If the branch librarian and the children’s superintendent are both yielding in disposition, the librarian may never have the conflict of jurisdiction brought to his attention. If either is yielding while the other is masterful, there will also be no trouble. In one case the branch librarian will run the adult end of her branch and leave the other to the children’s department; in the other there will be one branch, at least, where the children’s supervisor has little to say—a condition of things that may be tolerated, but is surely undesirable. But suppose that both heads are conscientious, assertive and anxious to push the work, fond of organizing administrative details and impatient of interference. Here we have the possibilities of trouble at once.
The first rumblings of the storm come usually in the form of complaints of interference, on the one side or the other. Then we have a demand from both sides for a definition of their respective rights and responsibilities. The librarian is asked, for instance, in just what respects the children’s librarian shall take her orders from the branch librarian and in what from the supervisor. This is a good deal like petitioning the legislature to pass a law specifying exactly when a child shall obey his father and when the mayor of the city. The librarian who enters on this plausible path will sooner or later be lost in the jungle. He has only himself to thank. Either he or his predecessor started the game and he must play it out to the end. We librarians are all responsible for each other’s faults. Let us see how he may play it.
In the first place, his is the power. What is done in any department is done by his orders or by the orders of some one endowed by him with authority to give orders. He has given two persons authority over the same field at one point, and it is his business to straighten things out. Here are some possible ways: