the neighborhood in which it stands has led to numerous attempts to
locate library buildings, especially branches, in some particular place.
These are often accompanied by offers of building-lots, which, it is sad
to say, have occasionally appealed to trustees not fully informed of
the situation. I recall several offers of lots in barren and unoccupied
spots--one in an undeveloped region whose owner hoped to make it a
residence park and another in the middle of a flourishing cornfield,
whose owner considered it an ideal spot for a branch library--at least
after he had sold off a sufficient number of building lots on the
strength of his generous gift. These particular offers were declined
with thanks, but in some instances members of boards of trustees
themselves, being only human, have not been entirely free from suspicion
of personal or business interest in sites. Here it is difficult to draw
the line between the legitimate efforts of a particular locality to
capture a branch site and those that have their origin in commercial
cupidity. Both of course have nothing to do with the larger
considerations that should govern in such location, but both are not
exploitation as we are now using the word.
A curious instance of the advertising value of the mere presence of a
public library and of business shrewdness in taking advantage of it,
comes from a library that calls itself a “shining example of efforts to
‘work’ public libraries for commercial purposes.” This library rents
rooms for various objects connected with its work, and finds that it is
in great demand as a tenant. Great effort is made by property owners
both to retain and to move quarters occupied for library purposes. The
board has recently refused to make selection of localities on this
basis.
There is another respect in which the public library offers an
attractive field for exploitation. In its registration files it has a
valuable selected list of names and addresses which may be of service in
various ways either as a mailing-list or as a directory. Probably there
are no two opinions regarding the impropriety of allowing the list to be
used for commercial purposes along either line. The use as a directory
may occasionally be legitimate and is allowable after investigation and
report to some one in authority. I have known of recourse to library
registration lists by the police, to find a fugitive from justice; by
private detectives, ostensibly on the same errand; by a wife, looking
for her runaway husband; by persons searching for lost relatives; and by
creditors on the trail of debtors in hiding. Where there is any doubt,
the matter can usually be adjusted by offering to forward a letter to
the person sought, or to communicate to that person the seeker’s desire
and let him respond if he wishes to do so. One thing is certain: except
in obedience to an order of court, it is not only unjust, but entirely
inexpedient from the library’s standpoint to betray to anyone a user’s
whereabouts against that user’s wishes or even where there is a mere
possibility of his objection. If it were clearly understood that such
consequences might follow the holding of a library card, we should
doubtless lose many readers that we especially desire to attract and
hold.
Of course the public library is not the only institution whose
reputation has exposed it to the assaults of advertisers. The Christian
ministry has for years been exposed to this sort of thing, and it is the
belief of Reverend William A. Lee, who writes on the subject in “The
Standard,” a Baptist paper published in Chicago, that in this case also
increased activity is to be noted of late. Persons desire to present the
minister with a picture on condition that he mentions the artist to his
friends; to give him a set of books or a building-lot that his name may
be used to lure other purchasers; they even ask him for mailing-lists of
his parishioners’ names. “I am constantly being besieged,” says Mr. Lee,
“by agents of divers sorts, and of divers degrees of persistency, for
indorsements of patent mops, of ‘wholesome plays,’ of current
periodicals, of so-called religious books, of ‘helps’ almost innumerable
for church-workers and of scores of other things which time has
charitably carried out of memory.”
It is refreshing to find that the kind of library exploitation most to
be feared seems not yet to have been attempted on any considerable scale
or in any objectionable direction. I refer to interference with our
stock and its distribution--an effort to divert either purchases or
circulation into a particular channel. My attention has been called to
the efforts of religious bodies to place their theological or
controversial works on the shelves of public libraries. When the books
are offered as donations, as is usually the case, this is hardly
exploitation in the sense in which we are considering it, unless the
library is so small that other more desirable books are excluded. A
large library welcomes accessions of this kind, just as it does trade
catalogs or railroad literature. Attempts to push circulation are
occasionally made, but usually without success.
But up to the present time it is the glory of the public library that it
knows neither North nor South, Catholic nor Protestant, Democrat,
Republican nor Socialist. It shelves and circulates books on both sides
of every possible scientific, economic, religious and sectional
controversy, and no one has raised a hand to make it do otherwise. We
should be proud of this and very jealous of it. As we have seen, there
is some reason to think that newly awakened interest in the public
library as a public utility has led to increased effort to gain its aid
for purely personal and commercial ends. Naturally these interests have
moved first. It is comparatively easy to steer clear of them and to
defeat them. But attempts to interfere with the strict neutrality of the
public library and to turn it into partisanship in any direction, if
they ever come, should at the earliest betrayal of their purpose be
sternly repressed and at the same time be given wide publicity, that we
may all be on our guard. We may legitimately and properly adopt a once
famous and much ridiculed slogan as our own, in this regard, and write
over the doors of our public libraries “All that we ask is, let us
alone!”
SERVICE SYSTEMS IN LIBRARIES
I should be understood better, perhaps, if I said “Civil service in the
library”; but the civil service is so called merely in distinction to
the military service, and there can be no military service in the
library, although the uniform of certain janitors and messengers may
appear, at first sight, to give me the lie. Every library, of course,
must have some plan of service, more or less systematic. This may or may
not be subject to the regulations of the state or city civil service. I
have no desire to dwell here on the question of the desirability of such
connection; but I cannot refrain from saying, at the risk of losing all
of my civil service-reform friends, that I regard the present methods of
bringing about appointment for merit only as makeshifts, well designed
to defeat the efforts of politicians and others who wish to see
appointments made for other reasons, but necessary only so long as those
efforts are likely to continue. I shall doubtless be told that they are
likely to continue indefinitely, and therefore that I have given away my
whole case. To show that this is not so, we have only to point to a
large number of libraries in connection with which there is no such
effort, and in which safeguards against it are absolutely unnecessary. I
do not know why politics has not invaded these institutions, but I know
that it has not. During the past sixteen years I have been connected
with four large libraries, and I am in a position to say not only that
no political appointment was made in them during my connection, but that
no such appointment was ever attempted or suggested. There is
absolutely no reason why the protection of “civil-service” regulation
should be thrown over these libraries, and every reason why they should
be free from the harassing and embarrassing petty annoyances and
restrictions that are inseparable from such regulation.
Much as I honor the advocates of civil-service reform, and applaud what
they have accomplished in the way of furthering a real merit system, I
submit that a further step in advance may be taken when we have heads of
municipal departments as unlikely to make political appointments as the
average librarian is, and as free from pressure to make such
appointments as are the librarians of a large number of our best
institutions. I regard that as the best system, therefore, in which an
appointing officer or body, sincerely desirous of making appointments
for merit only, is perfectly free to make such appointments in any way
that seems proper; and as only the second-best system that in which the
appointing power, unwilling to make appointments for merit, is forced to
do so, as far as may be, by the supervision and control of a body
created for the purpose. So long as we have unwilling municipal
officers, we must endure this second-best plan, of course; but
librarians are rarely of this kind, though they may be unfortunately in
the power of those who are. It has been my good fortune to formulate a
scheme of service for each of the four libraries to which I have
referred, and these schemes, with necessary modifications, are still in
satisfactory use. The first, for the New York Free Circulating Library,
was made in 1896; the last, for the St. Louis Public Library, in 1910.
Some were hampered by the necessity of adapting them to municipal
regulation, while others were quite free; and other local conditions
imposed differences upon them, but they depended, in the main, on the
same principles and were carried out in much the same way.
I have numerous requests for information on this subject and for advice
upon methods of grading library staffs, with regulation of promotions,
increases of salary, etc. Possibly the best way to answer these may be
to give a brief account of the way in which the work was done in these
four cases.
It has been assumed by some that, as every good librarian desires to
have these matters systematically regulated, regulation by a city civil
service commission will be as good as any, and that a man who wishes to
have a system of his own and keep it under his own control is
unreasonable and foolish. A non-professional body, however, cannot, even
with professional expert advice, satisfactorily regulate the employment
of professionals for professional work. This point has been so often
insisted upon and elaborated that those, who do not now appreciate its
validity will never do so. Every good librarian will wish to create
machinery to put the right man in the right place in his force, and to
drop him out if he goes wrong; but it must be his own machinery, not
that of someone else, and must be designed to aid him, not to hamper
him.
My attention was drawn to the necessity of a more systematic plan of
service in the New York Free Circulating Library on assuming charge in
1895. The library had been hampered by insufficiency of funds and had
been obliged to supplement assistants of ability and experience with
others who had been employed simply because they could be obtained at
low salaries. Promotion, where it was distinctly indicated, was for
merit, ascertained simply by the librarian’s opinion; and salary
increases were made very largely for length of service. An effort was
made at the outset to regulate admission to the force and advancement
within it. The features of examination and of grades distinguished by
letters were borrowed from the Boston Public Library. A department head,
who had been giving private instruction, had by the board’s permission
placed some of her pupils in the library for practice work. This seemed
an excellent opportunity to train future assistants; so the private
class was turned into a library training class and the pupils into
apprentices, their teacher being retained as such and properly
compensated. The library force was divided into three grades, A, B and
C; to which a fourth, D was afterwards added. The first two were
indicated by the fact that the library consisted of six coordinate
branches, each with its librarian-in-charge and her first assistant. All
the former were graded as A and the latter as B. Class A thus
necessarily became limited in number, depending on the number of
branches, and B would have been similarly limited if it had not been
made to include also all the high-grade assistants--all capable of
assignment at any time to the work of a deputy librarian of a branch.
Class C was then a remainder class, including all other members of the
library staff. It soon appeared, however, that the line of demarkation
between those members of Class B who were first assistant librarians and
those who were not was much more distinct than that between B and C. B
was accordingly limited to first assistants; the remnant was called C,
and the old C became D. The old feeling that seniority should be
considered was deferred to by arranging for automatic increases of
salary within the grades at specified intervals. Janitors and
messengers remained quite outside this arrangement.
It was provided that no one should be promoted from grade to grade
without the passage of an examination; but that passage simply placed
the successful candidate on a list of eligibles, and promotion from this
list was made by considering personal fitness, character of work and
immediate conditions. Qualifications for the different grades differed,
but in quantity and advancement, rather than in quality, all coming
under the heads of literature, language, general information and library
economy.
This plan was formulated in consultation with the library committee, and
was adopted as part of the rules of the library by the board. The
committee differed somewhat on the seniority increases within grades,
which were finally retained, and considered it of great importance to
emphasize work and personal fitness. Methods of including marks for
these in the final standing of the candidate were considered, but the
difficulty of doing so led to the adoption of the plan as stated.
It was decided to give every member of the staff the right to demand an
examination for promotion on the expiration of three years’ service in
one grade, and to admit others by special order. Advancement proved to
be necessarily so rapid, however, that no one who had any chance of
passing the examination ever remained three years in a grade, and this
clause proved practically inoperative.
Of course, many passed and were placed on the eligible list for
promotion who had no chance of advancement for reasons connected with
work or personality. This caused dissatisfaction which it was sought to
mitigate by recognizing presence on the eligible list by increase of
salary to the grade limit, provided this had not been already attained.
Even so, however, it continued to exist.
The alternative was considered of examining only those selected for
promotion and of making promotion conditional on the passage of such
examination, but was rejected, although a perfectly possible and logical
plan. But objectionable in many ways as all examinations are, they
foster a feeling that everyone is having a chance, and previous
selection, no matter how good, is open to the same objection as the
selection alone would be, without any test at all.
It would also have been possible to make the examination competitive,
placing the names on the list in the order of passage and promoting in
that order, or grading the names in order of seniority, as in most city
systems. But both these plans are open to obvious objections, and I
still think it best to form an eligible list whose names shall not be
considered in any order at all, the appointing officer being quite free
to make his choice among them.
The application of this system of grading to the staff, as it existed,
involved discrimination at only one point--that separating Classes B and
C, or as renamed later, C and D. The line was drawn partly on the basis
of the salary list as it stood, and partly by duties, and there was
little dissatisfaction.
I have said that this system was formally adopted by the board. This is
not necessary, nor is it the best plan. A system of this kind is best
regarded simply as an aid to the librarian in making recommendations for
appointment or promotion. In making such recommendation, the librarian
must, of course, satisfy himself that his candidates are fit, and it is
proper that he should adopt any system that commends itself to him for
ascertaining that they are so. The board is, of course, the final
authority. It could override any system that it might adopt, just as
easily as it could go over the head of the librarian’s recommendation;
and it is better for its own dignity that a departure from the system
should take the latter form, rather than the former.
I regard it as quite sufficient, therefore, when a librarian grades his
staff, that he should simply report to his board that he is about to
make certain dispositions and require certain tests to aid him in making
proper recommendations for appointment and promotion, and that his
recommendations in future will be guided by these arrangements. The
authority of the board and its ability to reject his recommendations
have not been touched, and its disposition to trust him and accept his
advice will be surely increased as it sees that he is adopting plans to
improve that advice and give it force.
This grading of the New York Free Circulating staff has been dwelt on at
length, although very simple, because it formed the basis of the other
gradings, now to be described.
The application of a similar system to the staff of the Brooklyn Public
Library took place early in 1899, at a time when, owing to a crisis in
the affairs of the library, it had temporarily ceased to do work. It had
only four library assistants, and yet the probabilities were strongly in
favor of an immediate and rapid expansion, such as actually did take
place not long after. Expediency, therefore, pointed to the organization
of the staff on the supposition that it would soon be of considerable
size.
The grading was precisely similar to that just described, except that
Classes C and D were combined and called Class C, and the letter D was
used to designate members of the training class. The principal interest
in the scheme as then adopted lies in its relations with the city civil
service. The New York Free Circulating Library was a private
institution, charitable in its origin, but broadening rapidly out into
real public work. It had no relations with the city, except to apply
annually for its subsidy and receipt for the monthly instalments thereof
as paid over. There could be no question therefore of city civil service
jurisdiction. The case in Brooklyn was different. The members of the
Board were appointed by the Mayor, and the library was recognized as a
city institution, although exactly what this meant had not yet been
definitely determined. The scheme of service was adopted at first on the
supposition that the board was to be as free in the matter as though it
had been an entirely independent body. The question might never have
arisen, but was precipitated by the city auditor’s holding up the
payroll on the ground that it had not been certified by the municipal
Civil Service Commission. The question went at once to the Corporation
Counsel for an opinion, and after he had decided that the city civil
service regulations covered the library force, there was a further
dispute with the state Civil Service Commission, exacerbated by a
difference in political complexion between the two bodies. This held up
the payroll for some time, and did not tend to reconcile any member of
the staff to its new status. Matters having been settled, the commission
promptly certified the payroll as it stood, in order to terminate the
embarrassing situation, and then ensued a series of conferences with the
librarian on permanent grading. It was decided that the librarian and
assistant librarian fell within the exempt class, and that other members
of the staff could be divided into senior and junior assistants, the
latter including only members of the training class until properly
appointed to permanent positions. Whatever grading the library might
choose to make within the senior assistant class (A, B and C) was
therefore its own affair, the commission taking cognizance of it only so
far as it involved increase of salary. The point of conflict came at
entrance to Class C, or on appointment to permanent position in the
library. The commission at first insisted that it should make its own
eligible list, graded in accordance with its own examinations, although
it agreed to admit no others except members of the training class to
such examinations. At least one examination of the kind was held, the
questions evidently being written by some outside librarian on general
principles, and with little reference to our needs and conditions.
Ultimately, however, the commission agreed to let us hold the
examinations and to accept our rating, although, when the eligible list
had once been formed, we were bound by it rigidly. In regard to persons
outside our graded force, such as janitors and messengers, we were held
strictly to civil service rules, selecting our men from the first three
on the list submitted to us by the commission. An unsatisfactory person
could be summarily rejected after trial for a specified period, and as
many such were on the list, there was rapid rotation in office in this
part of the force. In the graded staff, also, although it might seem
that the commission had almost abdicated its powers in our favor, we
felt the restriction that bound us to select from the top of the list.
Even though we had originally made the ratings, it often happened that
for the particular vacancy in question the sixth name might be that of
the best-qualified person, and we had the disagreeable alternative of
taking one who was not our first choice, or of appointing on trial and
rejecting until the proper name had been reached--a process much in
vogue in city departments, but tiresome to the appointing authority and
ignominious to those who were thus rejected and who might be better
qualified than the person desired for another kind of position.
In 1901 the New York Free Circulating Library became the Circulation
Department of the New York Public Library, under circumstances that gave
it a separate governing body, responsible to the trustees of the Public
Library, and a separate staff, whose organization was not necessarily
the same as that of the reference staff. The annexed staff, of course,
brought its own organization with it, and this, with some modifications,
became that of the present Circulation Department. The principal changes
were the limitation of Class C to three times the number of branch
libraries and the almost total abolition of salary increases for length
of service within grades. The former prevented unlimited promotion from
D to C, and made necessary a selection from the waiting list to fill
actual vacancies, and the latter, while not doing away with a difference
of salaries in the same grade, made it possible to give the increases as
a reward for good work. The designation of the grades by letters was
objected to by some members of the board, on the ground that it meant
nothing, so that alternative names were adopted for C, D and E, the two
upper grades having already the names of librarian-in-charge and first
assistant. Members of C were named second assistant librarians; D,
assistants, and E, attendants.