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of the modern elaborate systems of scientific management in the various forms of industry has for the most part superseded the best type of ordinary management known as the "initiative and incentive system."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.