Miss TUTT: Mr. Chairman, I scarcely feel prepared to say anything about her library, particularly as an automobile library, for I do not know that she has done anything especially in the automobile work of her library, her work taking up all lines. Her work has grown to such an extent that she told me just a day or two before I left that she really did not know but that they would have to get another name for it; she had not as yet found anything in the corporation that she had not been called upon to do, so that she was at a loss to know just what it was that she was expected to do. It has developed wonderfully and very satisfactorily. It has been up-hill work, as you all know. The corporation has changed hands, gone into various companies, come back again, and she had it all to meet and arrange. All that work and all the papers and records have just simply piled up, are all being sorted out now, indexed and put in order. She is doing a wonderful work. The other institutions there in South Bend are watching very closely her work and I think it will be but a short time before the other factories will be following suit; but so far as the automobile part is concerned, there is nothing any more special in that than in any other line of work that she has done; that is to say, nothing that I know of.
The VICE-PRESIDENT: I am going to ask Mr. Marion, our secretary, who is at the head of a technical library, to take part in this discussion.
Mr. MARION: I must say, as one of the other speakers, that I have not prepared a paper, believing that in such an assemblage of essayists and discussers it would not be impossible to find some very good material from which to talk extemporaneously. I have not been disappointed. Two or three points I will mention in what may be only a rambling discussion, but they may be worth while to some of you.
Mr. Handy mentioned in a passing way only the entrance of a large number of college men into business today. I do not think he put the matter nearly strong enough. It is this very entrance of well-educated men into business, rather than coming in through the long process of experience, entering, that is, half way up the scale of life, equipped with a fine technical training, making them already professional men, as the physician steps into the community a professional man, that has forced business to equip itself along a little different line. It seems to me this is one of the great telling reasons why more and more special libraries are going to be built up in manufacturing concerns and industrial plants; for with these men coming in, they do not come as mechanics wanting a plane, a saw or a hammer; they come primarily wanting books and nothing else. They have been trained to the ample use of books for four and sometimes six years previous to their entrance to business, and to take books away from them would be like taking the plane or saw or hammer away from the carpenter. So these men must be provided for, and I think that is one of the chief causes that is compelling business to adopt libraries.
Regarding the type of librarian that is required for administering this sort of a library, I think enough emphasis has not been put upon the keen aliveness which is required in these people, if I may be pardoned for saying so, in comparison to those who are employed in public institutions, where the term of office is likely to run anyway for a year. In business, we have to make good, and to make good seriously, daily. Our reputation is at stake every time a question is asked.
Then it seems to me there is no opportunity for the quiet type of librarian who would like short hours and the freedom to come and go at leisure. It requires primarily some one of tireless vitality and one who is ready to sacrifice himself to build up not only the efficiency of his own department, but to support other departments when they may be overworked.
This brings me to the point of the preparation for special librarianship. I question very much whether the librarian who is prepared through the regular source of supply, the library school, today, is going to become just the type of person to take up this special library work. It seems to me the more I consider it that a great many of the most successful special librarians are those who have grown up through business, at least to a certain degree, and have taken on the library training in their own quiet moments. If this is the case, would it be worth while for the library schools to consider a list of special libraries where candidates for their certificates or diplomas might go to spend a fraction of their summer vacation in actual special library work and receive credit in their schools toward their diplomas? I think that that might be worked out with more careful thought.
Mr. Morton mentioned the fact that the statistics of the library do not show up against the operating department, the manufacturing department, etc. I want to say that with the Arthur D. Little, Inc., Library, we are now obliged to pass in time slips. In other words, the library has been put upon a par with the other departments, the chemical, the research and the engineering departments, and at the end of every month we are given an opportunity to show what we have done in the way of results.
If there has been a quiet month of course there will be little put in the way of service, in time, but the time slips show and it is up to the library to maintain its standing, to show just what it has done during the month in actual time, because with a concern of the nature of ours, which is a consulting and engineering corporation, time is a great element. Mr. Handy touched upon that, but not half emphatically enough. In the insurance library I am sure he does not appreciate it. The monthly report is based primarily on the time spent on different problems, and these time slips are all assorted and tabulated against special pieces of work which are generally known in an engineering organization by what is called a job number; and so the librarian's time is now being accounted for in the same way that that of the head of the research department is being accounted for. It seems to me that that is a step in advance and indicates progress.
It occurred to me to say to you that while I have been here at this conference I have received application for another membership, so that while we came with 224, we now have 225 members. The Metropolitan Life Insurance Company have requested their librarian to become a member of this association, so that we grow daily.