In the case of library service, humanitarian regard should weigh equally with considerations of statistics and output, inasmuch as library work is a service for humanity and its welfare. Those entrusted with the management of libraries may well remember the maxim that "as we do we teach," which, applied to library conditions, may lead us to conclude that whatsoever is done to promote the happiness and best instincts of the rank and file in a library organization, will result directly in instilling in the public service, rendered by them, a spirit of sympathy, ready regard of the rights and needs of the public and an eagerness to serve loyally. Any library management conceived and executed in this spirit may be depended upon for achievements in what is really library economy.
I'll endeavor to formulate some suggestions toward effecting such results and I can harbor but feelings of satisfaction, should I be advised later that they have already been practically realized in some institutions.
The question of how to maintain and increase the efficiency of the staff might well be approached from two angles, the physical and the mental conservation of forces.
Dr. Luther H. Gulick makes the statement, that "there are conditions for each individual under which he can do the most and the best work. It is the business of those in charge of others to ascertain these conditions and to comply with them."
We hear so much in our day about scientific management that we may be led to begin inquiring skeptically if its value is not exaggerated in the interests of professional organizers, systematizers, etc.
No working chart for computing the energy of a mental effort or for the increase of its productiveness has as yet been devised but none of us will deny the need of a working plan for the day's work. Else we drift.
According to the new doctrine as laid down by Mr. H. N. Casson, "there is no such thing as unskilled labor, there is an intelligent method for every accomplishment. Scientific management does not mean frenzied production. On the contrary, it individualizes the workman, it means the better ordering of the work for the best interests of both individual and the service. Consequently, it provides for recreation as well as for work. It insists that the individual shall not sag so far down at the end of the day's work that he will not recuperate." This concerns not only expended energy but misdirected energy.
The day's schedule should be so arranged that work requiring the highest mental effort be assigned to the most fruitful hours of the individual, the work so distributed that each individual performs the task he can best do and is most worthy of his highest skill.
Pride in the work under your hand, the sense of doing something worth while, generates the spirit of loyalty and happiness which reckons, not so much with the written library regulations, as with the unwritten law of the service to stand by cheerfully as long as needed.
During the recent years I spent in the East, it was my privilege to become intimately acquainted with one of the most distinguished engineers our country produced during the last half-century. One day when I had occasion to call upon this gentleman, I was directed to proceed from his office to one of the noisiest departments of his extensive mills. There I finally located him seated on an anvil, watching taciturnly the moving throng of busy mechanics. I learned afterwards that the lifelong habit of this philosophic engineer was to emerge from his secluded office and enter the quarters where the "wheels turn around." There he would in his quiet manner ask shrewd questions and enter into conversation with any one whose task or skill attracted him. It is on behalf of the rank and file in the library world that I draw upon this recollection of an industrial organization noted for its resources and efficiency. Invite the confidence of every member of the staff, welcome suggestions, allow your assistants to voice the conclusions their experience and service bring home to them, listen with sympathy to suggestions prompted by loyalty and daily pondering. There are times when we may well forget our official gradings, when it will prove profitable to learn from the members of the crew how our theories stand the test.