first, let us not hastily conclude that we are necessarily well employed
simply because we are librarians. A library may do harm; I have
personally known of harm done by libraries. A group can be no better
than its constituents; a collection of harmful books is assuredly itself
harmful. More, a chain is no stronger than its weakest link; a fleet is
no faster than its slowest ship; and we may almost say that a library is
no better than its worst book. And we must not forget that a book may be
bad in three ways: it may give incorrect information, teach what is
morally wrong, or use language that is unfitting. It may be necessary
that a library should contain any or all of these, but if they give it
its atmosphere and control its influence as an educational institution,
even unwittingly, it is anti-social and those who administer it are
mal-employed. I have in mind a pseudo-scientific book for children that
abounds in misstatements combined with beautiful illustrations; a book
of travel full of ludicrous misinformation; a work intended to teach
Italians English, whose English is screamingly funny. The library
assistant who hands one of these to a reader is mal-employed. I can make
a list (and so can you) of books that teach, directly or by implication,
that what is universally acknowledged to be wrong is right--at least
under certain circumstances; that theft is smart and that swindling is
unobjectionable. The library assistant who circulates these is
mal-employed. All of us can easily also place our hands on books whose
only fault is that their language is objectionable--incorrect, silly or
vulgar. They may be otherwise unobjectionable, yet I venture to say that
the distribution of these books is also mal-employment. How about the
librarian who administers such a library, and the staff who assist him?
They are all mal-employed. No matter how well and how conscientiously
the cataloguer may perform her task, no matter how clean the janitor may
keep the front steps, they are only aiding to keep up an institution
that disseminates falsehood, teaches unrighteousness, encourages
vulgarity; and they are all mal-employed. This is what I mean when I say
that a library may be no better than its worst book. If its output is
bad, all exertion to accomplish that output is also bad. And as for the
output itself, it may be that the good done by a thousand good books may
not outweigh the ill done by a few bad ones.
A person is always mal-employed when he is leaving a more important
thing undone, to do a less important one. The degree of mal-employment
in this case is measured, of course, by the difference in value between
the two things. Mr. E.L. Pearson, in one of his library articles in the
_Boston Transcript_, calls attention to what he names “side-shows” in
libraries, and asserts that the chief business of a library, the proper
care and distribution of books, is often neglected that other things may
be attended to, and that money needed for books is often diverted to
these other uses. This is undoubtedly true in many cases, and in so far
as it is true some librarians and library assistants are mal-employed.
The scope of library work has broadened out enormously of late and
libraries are doing all sorts of things that are subsidiary to their
main work--things that will make that work easier and more effective.
This is as it should be, provided that these numerous tails do not wag
the dog. To take an extreme instance we will assume that a small library
is in great need of books and that a small gift of money, instead of
being expended for these is put into material for picture bulletins. We
should have no difficulty in concluding that the person who makes the
bulletins is mal-employed; and in so doing we should not be condemning
picture bulletins at all or saying that money spent for them is wasted.
Take again a case specially noted by Mr. Pearson, which is bothering the
heads of some of our library trustees at this moment--the acceptance and
preservation of full sets of the printed catalogue cards of the Library
of Congress. There can be no doubt of the value of such depository sets
to certain libraries, and as they are given free of charge the only
expense connected with them is the cost of an assistant’s time in filing
them, amounting perhaps to an hour or two a day, and that of cabinets in
which to keep them. Whether this cost is far outweighed by the
usefulness of the collection to the library and its patrons, or whether
that usefulness is practically _nil_, making the outlay wasteful, no
matter how small it may be, must be answered by each library for itself.
In some cases, labor expended on the filing of L.C. cards is undoubtedly
mal-employment.
Certain kinds of work which were either not mal-employment when they
were adopted, or were not recognized as such, have become so by reason
of a change, either in the conditions of the work itself or in the way
in which it is regarded by those who are doing it and by the public that
benefits by it.
Take, for instance, labor performed under an age-limit rule for
children, such as nearly all libraries once possessed, and such as is
still enforced in some places. If it is true that the library ought not
to be used by children below a specified age, work done in ascertaining
their ages and in excluding those barred out by the rule is necessary
and valuable. If this is not true; if the exclusion of such children may
be actually harmful to the community, it follows that all such work is
the most flagrant kind of mal-employment.
But there may also be mal-employment in the course of work of undoubted
advantage to the library and its public. If in the course of such work
something is done that sets it back instead of helping it on, or that
injures the library in some other way more than it helps by what it
directly effects, labor expended on that thing is mal-employment. This
is a more fundamental and elementary thing than lack of efficiency. If
an assistant is cataloguing books well, but much more slowly than she
ought, she is not efficiently employed, but neither is she mal-employed,
for she is doing nothing that directly injures the work. If she were to
stop, the library would be injured, not benefited. But if she is making
egregious blunders in her work, causing undue labor in revision or
making the catalogue confused or misleading in case her cards should get
into it, it might be better for the library if she were to stop work,
and she is surely mal-employed.
The public is apt to generalize from insufficient data. The user who is
treated rudely or sullenly at the desk just once does not say, “I will
make a record of this and of my subsequent experiences and see whether
it is a usual thing or an abnormal one.” Not at all. He or she at once
reports in conversation that the public library assistants are
continuously rude and disagreeable, and the machinery is forthwith set
in motion that makes or mars reputation. We may chafe at this; we may
try to disregard it, but in the end we shall have to accept it as a fact
of human nature. The public institution that wants to acquire that
valuable asset, reputation, whether it is a reputation for kindliness,
for helpfulness, for common sense, for scholarly acquirements, will have
to make up its mind to be kind, helpful, sensible, and scholarly, not
fifty per cent or seventy-five per cent of the time, but one hundred per
cent of the time.
But entirely apart from such serious intervals of mal-employment as
this, is it not probable that all of us are mal-employed for some little
part of our time? Is it not probable, in other words, that our work
would be improved if we should omit certain parts of it and do nothing
at all instead? It is certain, for one thing, that no one could work
continuously, day and night, without serious or fatal mal-employment.
That is the reason why our working hours are limited to seven or eight
in the twenty-four. Doubtless some workers are over worked and thus
mal-employed in their hours of overwork--the sleepy railroad engineer,
for instance, who misses a signal and sends a hundred passengers to
eternity. We are doubtless free in the library from just this kind of
mal-employment, except so far as it is forced upon us by assistants who
work or play too strenuously outside of working hours. To go back to the
assistant who is cross or careless for an hour every day; it is quite
possible that she is in no condition for working during that hour; and
this is not because the library hours of work are too long, but because
she does not take needed rest outside of those hours. Sometimes this
cannot be helped; often it is distinctly the worker’s fault, and it is
surely putting the library in a false position to make it overwork its
staff to their detriment and its own, just because the assistant puts in
her best and freshest hours in work, or more often in amusement, outside
the library.
Let me pause here to say that the reason we take vacations is to avoid
the chance of this kind of mal-employment. The theory of the vacation is
widely misunderstood. Some take it to be a period of amusement granted
for services rendered. “I think I have earned a vacation,” they say.
Others look upon it as play-time wrung from an unwilling employer--the
more they can get the better off they are. Few realize that it is, or
ought to be, simply an incident in the year’s work, an assignment to
special duty, without which mal-employment would be more apt to result.
The mal-employed intervals of an otherwise valuable worker are often due
to ignorance of conditions or sheer inability to meet them. In an
interesting study of bricklaying one of the modern school of efficiency
engineers found that most bricklayers kept their bricks too far from the
point on the wall where they were to be laid, and that a long and
wasteful carrying movement resulted. If the time occupied by this lost
motion could have been eliminated and simply given to resting, even
without doing any work, good would have resulted; these periods were
hence intervals of mal-employment The engineer eliminated them easily
and simply by bringing the pile of bricks within a few inches of the
wall. It is easy to say, “Why, of course, any one would think of that!”
Only no one ever did think of it. A large proportion of the most
valuable inventions and discoveries have been of this character. Some
one has remarked that in the earliest stage of an invention people say,
“It won’t work;” later they say, “It may work, but it won’t be of any
use.” Finally; when it is usefully running, they say, “What of it?
Everybody has always known about it!” We don’t do these obvious things
because they are elements in a series of acts that have grown to be
habitual. We take care of them subconsciously. Also, they take up so
little time individually that at first thought it seems foolish to try
to improve or eliminate them. Suppose one does a useless, or even an
injurious thing that lasts but three seconds? If he does it just once
and then stops, it would doubtless be folly to change it. If, however,
like the bricklayer’s useless and tiresome motions, it is repeated
hundreds and thousands of times, the matter stands on quite a different
footing. It is probable that all of us are habitually doing certain
things in ways that involve, without our realizing it, elements of this
kind, either mechanical or mental. Many things that we are doing by
laborious repetition, wearying ourselves and using up valuable material,
might be made to “do themselves” if we only knew how to utilize
tendencies and forces that are all about us, unsuspected. One of the
forces, for instance, is the desire of every person to do that which
will give him pleasure. If the things we want done can be done in
accordance with that desire, we can get others to do them for us. The
classical example of the boys who whitewashed Tom Sawyer’s fence for him
will occur to all. There is deep philosophy in this. I have known
librarians to exhaust themselves by trying to get newspapers to publish
what newspapers never would publish, while the reporters besiege others
for items which they know will be just what they want. The rules of some
libraries--both those for their public and those for their own
assistants--all seem to run up hill--to “rub everyone the wrong way,”
while those of others seem to get themselves obeyed without any trouble.
Sometimes the substitution of a mechanical appliance for brain-work is
what we want. What, for instance, is the use of tiring one’s brain and
impairing its usefulness for other needed work by forcing it to perform
such a mechanical operation as adding a column of figures? Every library
that can afford to own an adding machine ought to have one. The ones
that can not afford it usually do not need it.
While we are discussing the mal-employment that does its harm by tiring
out the worker, physically or mentally, and making him unfit for other
work, we must not neglect to say a word about unnecessary talk. Nothing
is so tiring to the brain as talk. I sometimes think that if we were all
forced to do our work in silence we would get along more rapidly even if
we had to communicate with each other in writing.
If a man were in charge of a piece of complicated machinery, and if he
feared that something had got into it to clog it, while his knowledge of
its elementary parts was still so slight that he could not tell which
particular bit in all the moving mass was helping it on and which was
hindering it, what would he do? He could remove the pieces, one by one,
and watch the effect. If the machine refused to run without a certain
piece, he would conclude that it was an absolutely necessary part; if it
still ran, though with difficulty, he would conclude that the part,
though not necessary, still promoted efficient operation; if removal
resulted in no change at all, the piece was evidently either an
unnecessary part, or an alien piece not so placed as to interfere with
action. If the machine worked decidedly better after removal, the
removed element must have been a clog--was, in fact, mal-employed.
How many of us feel like submitting to this test? If you should stop
your work, would the library machine run along quite as usual? Or would
it limp? Or would it refuse to run at all? Or would it--O distasteful
thought!--would it jump ahead and function with greater speed and
smoothness?
I believe in vacations; and yet I rather like to feel that the absence
of an assistant on vacation makes a difference. And if every one in her
department looks forward with fond expectation to her return and greets
her with looks of satisfaction and sighs of relief, I cannot help
feeling that she is a more integral part of the library machinery than
if her return were generally regarded with indifference or were dreaded
as a sort of calamity. When every one feels that she can work much
better when Miss Blank is away, I am forced to inquire whether in truth
Miss Blank is not a clog in the wheels instead of a cog, and whether a
permanent vacation would not be the proper thing for her.
And how about your library as a whole? Suppose it should be leveled by a
tornado, or swallowed up by an earthquake, or swept away by a flood?
What effect would this have on the life of your town? Would the
passer-by point to the ruins, or to the hole in the ground where once
your library stood, with the same kind and amount of interest that he
would show when viewing the stump of an old tree or the fragments of a
blasted boulder? Or would every man, woman and child feel the loss?
Would the teachers seek in vain for aid, the merchants for information,
the workmen for data of use to them in their daily tasks?
In other words, is your library of such definite use in the community
that it would feel your loss as it would that of a school house, a
church, the railroad station, the principal retail store? Or would its
loss affect that community only like the destruction of the monument on
the green, or the fence around Deacon Jones’ pasture?
If we are to make the library a vital influence in the community we must
so conduct it that its loss would be felt as a calamity--that it could
be spared no more than the postoffice could be spared, or the doctor, or
the school. And we must do our best so to carry on every part of its
work, every element that goes to make up its service to the public, that
this part or element is contributing toward that service and not
injuring it or delaying it. It is better for the community that we
should be unemployed than mal-employed, and if the community should ever
find out that we are the latter, we may be assured that unemployment
will shortly be our condition, whether we like it or not.
COST OF ADMINISTRATION[13]
_The possibility of deducing a general method for calculating the
probable cost of operation of a library._
The problem of ascertaining how the cost of administration of a library
is related to the various conditions and factors that affect it is the
problem of finding a formula in which, by simple substitution of numbers
representing or corresponding to these conditions, a reasonable or
approximate cost may be obtained. The data obtainable are the conditions
and actual cost in a limited number of cases. The obstacles are the
difficulty of stating certain of the conditions numerically and the
difficulty of deciding on the form of the formula, which must be done in
advance.
We must first agree, of course, that the legitimate cost of
administration of a library should bear some relation to its conditions
of work. Probably no one would quarrel with this, but the first thought
of one who considers the subject is generally that a large number of the
conditions could, by their very nature, not be susceptible of numerical
statement. Such factors as size of circulation, number of cardholders,
size of building, and so on, may be stated directly in figures, and many
such influence the cost of administration; but how, for instance, shall
be stated numerically the character of the locality--whether foreign or
native-born, wealthy or poor, etc., which also indubitably affects the
cost? In this particular case this factor exerts its influence through
others that may be numerically stated. So far as it necessitates
purchase of foreign books, a foreign population acts to increase cost;
so far as the demand for certain classes of books is concerned, cost
might be increased or decreased; but size of book collections and
circulation are both numerically determinable. It is possible that all
conditions which would seem at first sight not to be numerical might
reduce in this way, to various numerical factors. Regarding the form of
the function to be used for the formula, mathematicians tell me that its
determination might prove a great obstacle. Personally, it seems to me
that it is probably “linear,” that is, involving only the first powers
of the quantities concerned, never their squares, cubes, etc. Thus, all
other things being equal, increase of book collection increase of
circulation, increase of staff, etc., would approximately mean increase
of cost in direct proportion; or, at any rate, not in any way involving
powers above the first. I should try at the outset therefore, a simple
linear formula, such as
A_x_ plus B_y_ plus C_z_ plus D_u_ ... equals R in which _x_ might be
circulation, _y_ number of books, _z_ number in the staff, _u_ cubic
feet in the building, and so on. It would then be required to find
values for A, B, C, D, etc. This would require, of course, as many
equations as there are of these coefficients. To get each equation we
select a library that we are willing to accept as being conservatively
and properly operated, and substitute for _x_, _y_, etc., its reported
circulation, number of books, and so on, putting in place of R its total
cost of administration. Solution of this system of equations gives the
coefficients, A, B, C, etc., and furnishes the working formula required.
Thereafter when we wish to see whether a library is run as
conservatively as the typical ones selected, its statistics would be
used to substitute for _x_, _y_, _z_, etc., and the value of R thus
obtained would be compared with the actual cost.
The labor of reducing the system of equations would depend on their
number, which must equal that of the conditions. This would doubtless be
great--possibly twenty or twenty-five, but the work amounts simply to
doing a great deal of figuring.
I believe that this thing is worth trying, and I intend to try it myself
as soon as I can secure the necessary help in doing the work of
figuring, which in any case would not be nearly as great as that done to
calculate a comet’s orbit. Physicists and astronomers are daily doing
work of this kind, and doing it, too, on subjects regarding which there
is quite as much reason to doubt the applicability of the method as in
the present case. Why not try it? It admits of satisfactory “proving,”
for if applied to two groups of libraries with absurdly different
results, it would at once be shown to be faulty as so applied.
I believe that we librarians use the experimental method too
infrequently. When it is proposed to make some change or other, I
constantly hear the objection, “That wouldn’t result at all as you
expect; it would do so-and-so.” But why not try it? Try it and see what
happens. That is the only real test Of course, if trying will cost a
large sum, or involve some serious risk, we must count the cost, but in
nine cases out of ten nothing is involved but a little extra work.
In this case we are trying our experiments daily--we can’t help it. We
have libraries running under all kinds of conditions and we have
statistical reports of those conditions and of the resulting cost. It is
surely worth while to see if we can not connect these costs and these
conditions in some useful way.
I venture to close with a parable. At a national meeting of civil
engineers there was a discussion of the advisability--and
possibility--of ascertaining the exact distance between New York and
Chicago. In the course of the discussion it appeared that numerous
measurements had already been made for various purposes by different
parties and under divers conditions. No two of the results agreed
precisely. It was suggested by a speaker that some method of combining
the results might be found so as to arrive at a practical working
estimate of the distance. Objection was at once made by various members.
To many the very idea of such a proposal seemed a bit of pleasantry, and
they greeted it with smiles. One speaker poked fun at the idea of
treating so practical a question by abstract mathematical methods.
Another pointed out that the measurements had been made with various
objects in view; some for railroad purposes, others by government
topographers; that instruments of varying makes had been employed and
that the surveyors possessed differing grades of ability. He did not
see, therefore, how there was any possibility of taking all these into
account. Still another thought that the best way to get at the real
distance was to send out a questionnaire to persons who had traveled
from New York to Chicago and find out their opinions.
It seemed to be the consensus of belief that we should never ascertain
the exact distance from New York to Chicago, and that it was extremely
doubtful whether there really was any such distance. Probably it varied
from time to time, which would account for the varying measurements.
Is it conceivable that engineers would ever talk in this way? It is not.
But we have all heard librarians do so. Why?
LIBRARY CIRCULATION AT LONG RANGE
Is there still a place for the delivery station in the scheme of
distribution adopted by libraries, large or small? This question is
pertinent not so much because the use of the delivery station is being
discontinued, but because of a general feeling that any system of book
distribution that does not admit of seeing and handling the books is
inferior to a system in which this is possible.
It will thus be noted that the question of the delivery station pure and
simple, as opposed to the deposit station and the branch--a question
once hotly debated--is at bottom simply that of the closed shelf versus
the open shelf. The branch has won out as against the delivery station,
and the open as against the closed shelf. It will also be noted,
however, that none but small libraries find it good policy to place all
their books on open shelves. There is and always will be a use for the
closed shelf in its place, and the larger the library the more obvious
does that place become.
Now circulation through a delivery station is nothing but long-distance
closed-shelf issue--circulation in which the distance between
charging-desk and stack has been greatly multiplied. And a legitimate
reason for closed-shelf issue of this kind is that it is carried on
under conditions where open-shelf issue is impossible--about the only
excuse for the closed shelf in any case. Now no matter how many books
may be in branches or in deposit stations, it is obviously impossible
for the whole central stock to be at any one of them, still less to be
at all of them at the same time. And there are cases where it is
impracticable to use any deposit at all, while delivery from the central
library is feasible and reasonably satisfactory. There will always
continue to be, therefore, some circulation from a distant reservoir of
books that cannot be seen and handled by the reader for purposes of
selection.