Many of the smaller public libraries which are not large enough to maintain special business departments are giving most excellent service to business men. A number of the large public libraries of the country are making a specialty of serving business needs through departments organized particularly to serve business men. Some of these are the Division of Economics and Documents of the New York Public Library, the Business Men's Branch of the Free Public Library of Newark, New Jersey, the Technology Department of Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh, and the Industrial Department of the Los Angeles Public Library. The John Crerar Library of Chicago is a free reference library covering sociology and natural and applied science, which cannot be excelled by any other library collection in the United States in the facilities which it offers to business men. Every business organization should get acquainted with the public library of its city and ascertain what that library is able to do for it.
The Cost and Value of the Business Library
The cost of maintaining a business library is in no sense comparable with its value; for the help which a business library may give in a single instance is often of sufficient value to offset its cost of maintenance for a whole year. For example, a business firm had a law suit in a distant city and sent one of its employes to give expert testimony in the case. This employe found as the hearings in the case progressed, that he could strengthen his testimony if he had at hand figures showing the market price of lead for the past ten years. There was no time to spare in obtaining these data. He sent a telegram to the home office, which was received at 11:30 A. M. saying that he would call them by long distance telephone at noon and to have the figures ready. The head of the department to whom the message was addressed, with some perturbation, appealed at once to the librarian of the company, who was able in ten minutes to produce a table giving a summary of the prices desired, which had been printed in a technical journal. The company won the law suit and in comparison with the large amount of money saved, the salary of the trained librarian who knew how to meet the emergency, was a very small item.
No two business libraries are comparable as to cost of maintenance. Each must allow for financing on the basis of its individual needs and the money it can afford to spend.
If a business firm owns the building which it occupies it does not have to consider the rental of floor space for the library. If it has a liberal policy of advertising in the best technical or trade journals, it will need to spend very little on periodical subscriptions, as it will receive copies free on account of advertising. If it is a liberal user of the publications of the United States Government, it will find they cost little or nothing, and in any case the amount spent by business libraries for information special to a particular industry is never very large, because often the most valuable data cost practically nothing to secure.
Mechanical equipment, which will be discussed in chapter seven, is largely the initial expense, and the amount of money to be spent each year for additions to the original equipment will be quite small. The principal annual expenses in maintaining a business library are the salaries of the librarian, and assistants if required, and the additional expense of stenographic and office boy service.
The great mistake made by some business firms in maintaining library service has been the employment of inadequately trained librarians who do not produce high grade results. It is this lack of library education and experience, on the part of a number of so-called business librarians, which has been a hindrance to the recognition of what the business library really is and what it can do. The writer saw, some time ago, the sorry spectacle of one of the largest corporations in the country trying to inaugurate library service under the direction of a fourteen-dollar-a-week file clerk, who had not a single educational requirement necessary for the success of the undertaking. Such firms generally proclaim business library work a failure, instead of admitting they have made a wrong start and that they should have employed a high grade trained librarian.
Many firms having well organized correspondence files, which are giving satisfactory service, have conceived the idea of adding to their established filing department, and to the duties of their head file clerk, the library service which they judge their organization demands. They fail to appreciate the fact that a filing department, while it has some mechanical technique in common with an organized library, has an entirely different purpose, and does not require on the part of those in charge, educational qualifications at all comparable to those required of a librarian who must have not merely a large knowledge of library technique, but also must know books, and have a knowledge of a broad range of sources, from which adequate information can be drawn when any problem arises; for the business librarian must be a thinker as well as a worker and not a mere clerical machine. On the other hand, the trained librarian is competent to supervise correspondence and any other kind of files if the situation demands it. The essential qualifications for successful business librarianship are stated in the last chapter.
In conclusion, it should be said, that in establishing library service, a business organization must be willing to give such service a reasonable length of time to grow into the work of the organization. A wisely selected collection of material, adapted to the needs of the business, and thoroughly organized to give quick and accurate results, should be tested just as a piece of machinery is tested, namely, set up the apparatus, put it in full operation under competent supervision, and in the case of the business library, the verdict cannot but conclusively be—"it works."