There can be little question that scientific management, properly used, will reduce the costs of cataloging work. Adequate planning and supervision of all processes by the head cataloger, the classifier and others in charge of divisions of the work, can make for speed. I am convinced that we do not really know the maximum length of time which an assistant should be allowed to keep at one certain task. An assistant typewriting shelf-list cards should do rapid work for perhaps three hours. After that a measure of fatigue makes change of occupation advisable for the individual, and economical for the department. Slight fatigue from typewriting will not, however, impair efficiency in a different sort of work. A point worth considering here is, that the change in the occupation of a higher-grade assistant in order not to impair efficiency, should not mean time given to a lower or more mechanical grade of work. That is extravagance. Impending mental fatigue does not mean that mental processes are to be abandoned. Just as much rest is obtained, and efficiency is really increased, by simple change of the mental groove. Here the advocate of the general exchange of assistants between departments might say that the advisable thing to do is to send the assistant to another department. In most cases I believe that such a change is a mistake, because a change from one department to another means too great a break in the continuity of management in two departments. One manager can plan more effectively for the entire working time of an individual than two managers can plan for the two halves.
The development of library schemes of service, branches, stations, children's rooms, work with schools, has all added enormously to the routine and mechanical processes of cataloging. More shelf-lists, more catalogs, and all sorts of differentiation in the processes suitable to the special need have multiplied details faster than most librarians realize. It is this tremendous complexity which has worn out head catalogers, increased costs, and made administrators clamor for the elimination of unnecessary detail, without having a real understanding of what the detail is and is for.
Deterioration in the cataloging process will injure other departments, but undoubtedly most libraries have superfluous refinements that could well be omitted with economy in cataloging, and no loss to the chief end of all our work.
It is a temptation to consider carefully the methods which might save expenses in the cataloging process, but I can take time only to make brief reference to some of them, most of these having been frequently discussed at length before.
(a) Careful planning of catalog room for convenience, to save all unnecessary motions.
(b) Scientific supervision of tasks to produce greatest speed without undue fatigue.
(c) Stopping the publication of many monthly bulletins. Some bulletins of the larger and certain particular libraries are of inestimable value to other libraries. Most of these bulletins are printed from the linotype slugs used in printing their own catalog cards, and consequently the labor is minimized. The bulletins of most libraries, I firmly believe, are of no possible use to other libraries, and the material in them would be much more read by the public if published in the newspapers, as it should be in any case, and if the special lists, which are the most useful part of many bulletins, were printed on a multigraph, instead of being buried in forbidding bulletins that no able-bodied ordinary man in his senses could be driven to read.
(d) Use of Library of Congress cards. Some people say they do not save time. I recommend those people to recatalog a library without them, also to attempt to get along without them for a while for current additions. To the best of my knowledge they do save money, and I know they save wear and tear on typewriter machines and ribbons, and they save temper, which is nervous energy and worth while saving. If you don't believe that last read Goldmark on "Fatigue and efficiency" and then you will. Besides, Library of Congress cards look better than typewritten cards and have more durability, since typewritten cards rub and fade and have to be rewritten too frequently.
(e) What real objection can there be to simplifying the cards you write yourselves? It does not matter if they are not consistent with Library of Congress cards. No living borrower would know whether they were consistent or not, and no dead one would matter. Besides if variety is the spice of life, consistency is the vice of it. Nobody but a librarian ever worried about being consistent. I regret I can't even except the clergy.
(f) Omitting book numbers for fiction saves a vast amount of time and sacrifices little. They do not add beauty, and they cause endless trouble and expense without due compensation.