REPORT

OF

THE LIBRARIAN OF CONGRESS

LIBRARY OF CONGRESS

Washington D. C., December 6, 1920

SIR: I have the honor to submit herewith my report as Librarian of Congress for the year ending June 30, 1920. The report of the Superintendent of the Library Building and Grounds (and Disbursing Officer) follows, beginning at page 211. That of the Register of Copyrights is, as usual, attached as Appendix II.

In my report of last year (page 11) I named as "pressing" four needs of the Library in connection with its internal administration. They were:

1. A fundamental readjustment of the salary schedule, to adapt it to the present cost of living;

2. A (few) additional positions, to perfect the organization;

3. Additional equipment for the accommodation of material in certain divisions, particularly the Map and Music; 4. A bookstack in the Northeast courtyard.

These four needs still exist, and their urgency has of course intensified with the delay in meeting them.

SERVICE

The first (readjustment of the salary schedule) seemed in prospect of remedy through the Joint Commission on reclassification of salaries whose survey and recommendations were to cover the entire governmental establishment.

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The inquiry was had, a report was submitted to Congress, and the report included a reclassification of the Library service.

Unfortunately it was submitted (in March) too late for attention by Congress during the last session; its salary schedules were incomplete; and the application of the classification and of the schedules to the existing service (i. e., the allocation of the individual employees) was left still to be effected by the Civil Service commission. Moreover, as regarded the Library service, the schedules themselves as reported so vary from those proposed by the Advisory Committee of Librarians as apparently to require revision.

Much therefore remains to be done before possible action by Congress in a specific appropriation bill. It is the prayer of the Library staff—as of the service generally— that the way may be cleared for such action at the next session.

Meantime, the hardship upon the Library employees is disproportionate from the fact that the present Library scale is even lower than that in the other branches of the service.

The situation as affecting one of our divisions is well indicated in the report of the Superintendent of the Reading Room, in the following passage:

"The adjournment of Congress on June 5, 1920, brought to the Reading Room service the first real opportunity of a return to normal conditions since December 6, 1915. During the period of four and a half years between these dates Congress was in session all but 269 days. The six brief congressional vacations intervening (two of them of less than 12 days each) afforded only breathing spells before other sessions of redoubled pressure; and these short periods of relief all came either in the spring or late in the fall, outside the limits of the usual summer vacation season when rest and recreation are found to be most satisfactory for jaded minds and bodies.

"This long period of stress brought to our staff scarcely any increase in its numerical strength, but very great increases in the work to be done in meeting demands for material on war-time and reconstruction problems; great increases in the difficulties arising from the sudden creation of many governmental boards and bureaus without any provision for organizing and centralizing contact with the Library of Congress.

Greatest burden of all, however, was the constant loss of experienced assistants, the constant loss of their half-trained successors, and the constant loss of the raw recruits who in their turn succeeded. Of the staff as constituted in December, 1915, less than half are still in the service; the other half has had to be replaced in toto more than four times. The service rolls of the Reading Room service since December, 1915, contain the names of 118 assistants no longer in the service.

"The year just ended has brought little improvement in service conditions. Our losses during this year numbered 25, over one-third of the force. Inadequate salaries account for the greater part of the resignations. Until the salary scale is readjusted to meet the economic conditions of the present day, no real improvement is to be expected. In a well-organized library where proper processes of preparing material for use are kept abreast of the current accessions, there is much work to be done in which willing and intelligent young persons of only high-school education can quickly acquire sufficient training to render, under proper guidance and supervision, a service acceptable to the users of the Library. But the proper guidance and supervision required, the requisite knowledge of the contents of books, the necessary acquaintance with technical library processes, the executive ability needed to make effective the subordinate forces and to keep them so are not to be secured or retained on the salaries now paid in the Library of Congress. Continued reliance is not to be placed (as largely at present) upon a service supply of persons not wholly dependent upon the salaries paid, able to accept the prestige of the Library of Congress connection as part payment for

Retirement Act

services rendered, or forced by special circumstances to take less than they deserve, or able to render a service whose quantum somewhat fails though its quality be high."

If long and continuing experience, added to specific training, is necessary in the Reading Rooms, the necessity of it in a division such as the Catalogue and Classification is to a librarian-still more obvious; for the lack of continuity there means slipshod and temporary results which must be revised later at a double expense; an accumulation of "arrears"; and the waste of time of the few continuing experts in the training of new appointees who in turn prove to be but temporary.

It is no exaggeration to say that the present conditions in the Library service (as in some other of the scientific services of the Government) present a crisis, which must be met in a large way. A similar crisis in our schools and colleges has aroused the country; and compensation for teachers has almost everywhere been substantially advanced. As against library work-with which, for a person of scholarly tastes, it naturally competes-teaching offers now a superior emolument. And unless the Library scale also be readjusted substantially we shall experience a constant depletion of the professional staffs, a fatal deterioration in scholarship, a disintegration. True of the National Library, this is equally true of the entire scientific service of the Federal Government: whose experts are being constantly drafted by research establishments, and whose subordinate service is as constantly depleted by the superior pay in mere industry.

The act [of May 22, 1920] providing for the retirement of Federal employees of the age of 70 or more was not compulsory. It permitted the continuance for periods of two years of any such employee whose retention would seem to the advantage of the Government.