of service has any good points to offset its obvious disadvantages; and
it is consoling to find that there are such--not enough to cause us to
select an unsupported delivery station deliberately where a deposit or a
branch would be possible, but enough to satisfy us that a delivery
station is worth while if we can use nothing better and to induce us to
lay stress, if we can, on the particular features that make it
satisfactory.
For myself, after three years in a library with a large station system,
following an experience in institutions where there was nothing of the
kind, I may say that it has gratified and surprised me to find that
personal contact between librarian and reader is possible in such a
system, to almost the same extent as in an open-shelf library, although
the contact is of quite a different quality. The quality of the contact
is related to that possible with the open-shelf precisely as mental
contact by letter writing is always related to that by conversation. It
is superior, if anything, to that usually obtained in short-distance
closed-shelf circulation, although possibly not to that obtainable under
ideal conditions.
The establishment of more or less personal relations of confidence
between library assistant and reader takes longer and is less complete
when the sole intermediary is written language. It is always harder and
requires more time to become intimate by letter than by personal
intercourse. In the former case the contact is purely mental, in the
latter it is affected by personal appearance and conduct, by facial
expression and manner. All this is one of the chief factors in the
success of the open shelf. But the advantages are not all on the side of
the direct personal contact, as the correspondence schools have been
astute enough to find out. In the first place, _litera scripta manet_;
one may read the same written communication several times, whereas the
same spoken communication is of and for the moment. Then the very fact
that the written message is purely intellectual and has no physical
accompaniments may lend force to its intellectual appeal, when that
appeal has once gained a foothold. When this is the case the writer may
take his time and may plan his campaign of influence more carefully than
the speaker. The effect of trivial circumstances, of unfavorable
personal elements, of momentary moods, is obviated.
It may be, then, that if personal relations between librarian and reader
can be set up through the written word, there may be something of this
kind even in long-distance, closed-shelf circulation. This relation may
be lacking, even when the circulation is at short range. It is usually
lacking at the closed-shelf delivery desk, necessarily so in a rush,
although at quieter times there is no good reason why it should not
exist. I know that it sometimes does exist under these conditions,
though a counter between two human beings, whether in a store, an office
or a library, is not conducive to relations of confidence. It may even
be lacking in the open-shelf room, when assistants on floor duty have
not the proper spirit and a due conception of their own responsibilities
and opportunities.
It may exist at long range. But does it? I can answer for only one
library; but I have no reason to believe that our experience is by any
means exceptional. Here are some instances, reported at my request from
our own Station Department by Miss Elsie Miller, the department chief:
“(1) A short time ago one of the patrons of Station 27 sent in a slip
asking to have his book renewed, and requested that we send him
information on peace conferences. The latter was duly sent, but through
some error the renewal was overlooked. Consequently six days later an
overdue postal was mailed. This gentleman is always quite prompt in
returning his books, and evidently had never before received a notice.
So he was most perturbed, and wrote us a very long letter explaining the
mistake. He said that he felt that the librarian should know that he was
not at fault, had not broken the rules, and had a clear record. But in
imparting this fact to the librarian, he wanted it understood that the
assistant committing the error should not in any way be punished for it,
because she had helped him greatly in his work, by sending the very
facts on peace conferences that he was looking for. He asked that the
assistant be praised for her good work rather than blamed for her error.
“(2) Celia R----, whom we have never seen but all feel well acquainted
with, tried in vain for some time to borrow a certain little volume of
Eskimo stories, but succeeded only in getting substitutes. About the
middle of December she sent in with her card the following request:
‘Please give me “Eskimo stories,” because it is Christmas and you never
send the right book.’
“(3) The cards of Mr. and Mrs. M----, of Station 54, come in with a
slip, ‘Please send a novel.’ We know that the books must be 7-day
adventure stories, and must have publishers’ binding and an interesting
frontispiece or they will come back to us on the next delivery unread.
“(4) At least one of the S---- family’s cards is reported lost each
week. We immediately recognize Mrs. S----’s voice when she telephones,
and ask whether it is Ralph’s or Walter’s card that is missing this
time. In a tone of despair she probably says, ‘No; it is Morris’s.’ We
promise to look the matter up thoroughly. Then we do no more about it.
After two days we call up and tell her we are very sorry we have been
unable to trace the card. ‘Oh, we’ve found it here at home; thank you so
much for your trouble,’ she answers. ‘And, by the way, we have not been
able to find Nicholas’ card all day.’ So we look up Nicholas’ card in
the same way. No S---- card was ever known to be lost outside of the
S---- household.
“(5) C39 of Station 6 has this note clipped to her readers’ index: ‘Give
overdue notices to Stations Department.’ We hold her notices a few days
to give the books a chance to come in, because she uses a bi-weekly
station. Each time that she receives an overdue notice, it costs her ten
cents carfare to come to the library to investigate, and it costs the
library a half hour of an assistant’s time to pacify her. Our new method
works beautifully, and both library and reader find it economical.
“(6) An old gentleman of Station 15 (at least we have pictured him as
old, for it is a trembling hand that writes the titles) for a long time
sent in a long list of German novels which we marked, ‘Not in catalog:’.
We were out of printed German lists at the time, so selected a good
German novel and sent it to him. It was immediately returned. We tried
again--in vain. Then again! We sent him everything that the average
German finds intensely interesting. But the books always came back to us
on the next delivery. One day we substituted ‘Im Busch,’ by Gerstaecker.
He kept it two weeks, and then his card came in with a list of
Gerstaecker novels, copied from the title-page of “Im Busch.” He read
all our Gerstaecker books and then wanted more. We wrote him that he had
read all the books of this author and again substituted. Then a fresh
list of Gerstaecker came in, and now he is reading all those books a
second time.
“(7) One of the station men watches our substitutions and looks over
them to get ideas for his own reading. Once when we had substituted
Leroux’s ‘Mystery of the yellow room’ the station man ordered a copy of
that book for himself, and finding it interesting read all the Leroux
books in the library.
“(8) Here is a letter from a youthful station patron:
“‘Please send me the III Grade, The golden goose book! Please do.
Kisses.
XXX.’”
These incidents, which of course might be multiplied indefinitely, show
at least that the service rendered by a delivery station is not, or at
any rate need not be, a mere mechanical sending of books in answer to a
written demand.
So much for the element of personal contact and influence. Next let us
consider for a moment that of actual contact with the books from which
selection can be made. This of course does not take place in any
closed-shelf system--least of all in one at long range. But in certain
cases this contact is of no special advantage. In particular, if a
reader wants one definite book and no other, he may get it as surely,
or be informed as reliably that he cannot get it, and why, at a delivery
station as at a set of open shelves. The only drawback in “long-range”
work is that the user must wait longer before he can get his book,
provided it is on the shelves. Against this wait must be set the time
and cost of a personal visit to the distant library building.
Of the “browsing” contact there can be none, of course. This seems a
more serious matter to me than it would be to those who deprecate
“browsing,” or at any rate discourage it. But there is no question that
the alternative between library and delivery station, if squarely
presented, should always be answered by choosing the library. Here the
alternative is between the delivery station and no use at all. This
brings up another point:
May it not be, in some cases, that we really are offering the reader an
alternative between delivery station and library and that through
indolence he takes the former? Doubtless this is often the case, and it
should not be so. The location of every delivery station should be
studied from this standpoint, and its continuance should be made a
matter of serious question. When all is said and done, there will remain
some stations where a minority of users would go to the library if the
station were discontinued, and would be benefited thereby at the expense
of a little more exertion. The fact that there are some real advantages
in long-range circulation should enable the librarian, in such a case,
to strike some kind of a balance, satisfy himself that this particular
station is or is not of resultant benefit to the community, and act
accordingly. It is also possible, in some cases, to combine the deposit
feature with the delivery station, and it goes without saying that this
should be done just as the delivery feature should be added to every
deposit and every branch, where it is feasible.
Finally, the long range circulation may be adapted to the use of the
busy by enabling them to kill two birds with one stone. Libraries are
always trying, with doubtful success, to get hold of persons who are
busy about something else--factory workers, shoppers, and so on. A
residential district is a better place for a branch library than a
shopping district, although the number of different persons who pass the
door daily is larger in the latter, because there is more leisure in the
residence street--less preoccupation and bustle. But if it is made
possible for the shopper to use the library with practically no delay,
while he is shopping, will he not take advantage of the opportunity? A
recent experiment in the St. Louis Public Library convinces me that he
will. We are now operating a downtown branch in the book department of a
large department store, and we have an hourly messenger service between
the library and this station. I believe this is the first time that such
frequent delivery service has been tried. This makes it possible to
leave an order at the beginning of a shopping trip and to find the book
ready at the close of the trip. The interval would never be much over an
hour, and might be as little as fifteen or twenty minutes.
There are two favorable factors here which it might be difficult to
secure elsewhere: The shopping district here is near enough to the
central library to make frequent delivery possible, and the management
of the store where our station is located is broad enough to see that
the possibility of borrowing a book free, from the library, even when
presented as an immediate alternative to the purchase of the same book
from the counters of the store, does not, in the long run, injure sales.
It is not absolutely necessary, of course, to operate this scheme from a
department store, neither is greater distance an absolute bar to
frequent deliveries. I believe that this kind of long-distance service
is well worth the attention of librarians.
And, in general, I believe that a realization that all long-distance
service has its good points may do good by inducing us to dwell on those
points and to try to make them of more influence in our work.
CONFLICTS OF JURISDICTION IN LIBRARY SYSTEMS[14]
At bottom, a departmental system in a large institution is simply an
outcome of the fact that its head requires aid in administration. At
first, perhaps, he can actually do everything with his own hand; next he
requires helpers, but he can oversee them all; finally, he must have
overseers, who are the only ones with whom he deals directly and for
whom he naturally classifies the work and divides it among them
accordingly. This is not merely a symbolical or fanciful account of such
a development. There are plenty of heads of institutions, educational,
commercial and industrial, who have personally seen every stage of
it--who are now administering a complicated system of departments where
they once did everything themselves. In particular, there are now
librarians, at the head of great libraries, who began library work by
performing, or at least overseeing directly, the elementary acts of
which library operation may be taken to consist, and who have watched
such a simple system of superintendence develop year by year into
something complex.
Such a development, as I have said, is naturally based on some kind of
classification. If one could sit down and, foreseeing the growth of his
institution for years to come, settle upon the way in which that growth
should be cared for, his classification might possibly be more logical
and workable than most classifications now are. The best of them are
wofully imperfect, as no one knows better than we librarians. And when
division into classes proceeds _pari passu_ with growth, we are
necessarily bothered with that troublesome thing--cross-classification.
As our institution grows, one direction of growth and a corresponding
set of conditions and needs comes into the foreground after another, and
our basis of classification is apt to change accordingly.
In the library, for instance, territorial expansion has frequently
claimed the right of way. It has been evident that wide regions within
the municipality were not reached by the library’s activities; hence the
establishment of branches--practically classification on a regional or
territorial basis. Next, perhaps, some other need is pushed
forward--say, the necessity for special care given to the children of
the community. Here is a non-territorial basis for classification,
founded only upon the age of the library’s users. These are not classes
and sub-classes, but are entirely different primary systems of
classification, whose dividing lines cross and do not run parallel. A
man who should sit down and try to evolve, at first hand, some sort of
classification of library work, might adopt one or the other, but not
both. In one case he might divide his city into districts, with district
superintendents and local librarians under each; in the other, he might
divide his users by ages and tastes and have a superintendent for each.
In neither case would there be cross-classification, with its
over-lapping classes and consequent interferences of jurisdiction.
But this is not the way that things work out. The librarian finds it
necessary to have his geographical subdivisions and also those based on
age, and he adopts others also as they appear desirable, without much
regard for the logic of classification. If he does take it into account,
he feels that the troubles resulting from conflicts of jurisdiction
will be more easily dealt with than those consequent upon a refusal to
respond to the present demands of the work. Also--and this is an
important factor--conflicts of jurisdiction, no matter how inevitable,
are in the future, and the present demands of the work look vastly
larger and press with insistence. Is there any wonder that he does what
lies immediately before him and lets the future take care of itself?
Unfortunately, the future always does take care of itself very well
indeed, and presents itself to demand a reckoning at the appointed time.
The library, for instance, that has its branches for different regions
and its children’s room in each gets along well enough so long as its
cross-classification of work exists only on paper. But the time comes
when departmental organization must begin, and this must be based on the
classification. There may be a superintendent of branches and a
superintendent of children’s work, or the branch librarians may report
to the librarian directly, or there may be other dispositions with other
duties and names. In any case, a children’s room at a branch library
necessarily finds itself in two departments, under two jurisdictions and
under two heads. If the branch librarian and the children’s
superintendent are both yielding in disposition, the librarian may never
have the conflict of jurisdiction brought to his attention. If either is
yielding while the other is masterful, there will also be no trouble. In
one case the branch librarian will run the adult end of her branch and
leave the other to the children’s department; in the other there will be
one branch, at least, where the children’s supervisor has little to
say--a condition of things that may be tolerated, but is surely
undesirable. But suppose that both heads are conscientious, assertive
and anxious to push the work, fond of organizing administrative details
and impatient of interference. Here we have the possibilities of trouble
at once.
The first rumblings of the storm come usually in the form of complaints
of interference, on the one side or the other. Then we have a demand
from both sides for a definition of their respective rights and
responsibilities. The librarian is asked, for instance, in just what
respects the children’s librarian shall take her orders from the branch
librarian and in what from the supervisor. This is a good deal like
petitioning the legislature to pass a law specifying exactly when a
child shall obey his father and when the mayor of the city. The
librarian who enters on this plausible path will sooner or later be lost
in the jungle. He has only himself to thank. Either he or his
predecessor started the game and he must play it out to the end. We
librarians are all responsible for each other’s faults. Let us see how
he may play it.
In the first place, his is the power. What is done in any department is
done by his orders or by the orders of some one endowed by him with
authority to give orders. He has given two persons authority over the
same field at one point, and it is his business to straighten things
out. Here are some possible ways:
1. The authority of one head may be absolutely extinguished in the field
where conflict exists. Here we have legalized the state of things
described above as existing with a combination of one spineless
department-head and one very spiny one. It works, but at the expense of
everything that tends to the efficiency of the extinguished authority,
and I do not recommend it.
2. An attempt may be made, as noted above, to draw a line between the
two spheres of authority and keep each in its place. This appeals to
those who are fond of detail, for it can be done only by considering
and ticketing details. A line, defined by some one clear principle,
cannot be drawn in a field of this kind between two things both of which
logically cover that field. It is logical that the children’s librarian
in a branch should be wholly under the authority of the branch
librarian, since she is a branch employee like the others. It is just as
logical that she should be wholly under the authority of the supervisor,
of whose department she is a part. If we are to define the things in
which she is to obey the one and the other, they must be enumerated one
by one. And then other things will turn up that have not been thus
enumerated, and we are in trouble again. This plan, as I have said,
appeals to those who revel in regulations and specifications, but I can
recommend it no more than the other.
3. One department may formally and distinctly be set above the other.
Or, what is the same thing, the librarian may resolve, when a conflict
arises, always to decide the matter in favor of one particular
department. This means, in the special case that we have been using as
an illustration, either that the children’s department shall be allowed
to do nothing in a branch library without the consent of the branch
librarian, or of the supervisor of branches, if there is one; or that
all questions involving the administration of a branch children’s room
must depend ultimately on the chief of the children’s department.
This may seem to be the same as the plan by which the authority of one
department is absolutely done away in the disputed sphere. It is of the
same type, but not so drastic. In the other plan one has not authority
to do anything; in this, one must ask permission--not the same thing by
any means. This plan is practically in effect at some libraries; it
would probably be regarded as equitable by most department
heads--provided their own department were put ahead of the other. The
trouble is that it involves an arbitrary subordination--one that does
not exist in the nature of the classification. And this subordination is
local and partial; it cannot hold good for the whole department. No one
would think of placing the branch department, as a whole, under the
children’s department, or _vice versa_. And the objections, although not
so strong as those to the extinguishment plan, are of the same kind. The
efficiency of one department or the other is bound to suffer, and for
this reason I do not consider this the best plan.
4. All department heads in conflicting spheres, may be regarded simply
as advisers of the librarian and not as possessing authority in
themselves to give orders. A conflict is thus reduced to contradictory
advice from two sources. The librarian then pursues whatever course
seems good to him. This plan has attractive features, especially to
administrators of the type that like to keep a finger in every pie.
There is doubtless danger in aloofness. The librarian must know what is
going on, but I see no advantage in requiring him to decide questions of
trivial detail at frequent intervals, as he must do under this plan; for
conflicts generally begin in questions of detail and it is at the
beginning or even earlier, in anticipation, that they must be caught and
adjusted. This plan works, but it reduces the department head to a
consulting expert and burdens the librarian with detail. It does not
appeal to me at all.
5. The two conflicting departments may co-operate, intelligently and
courteously without sacrifice of authority or self-respect, under the
advice and orders of the librarian.