The moralist it could not spoil, Singers of songs on all men's lips, At the conclusion of Mr. Pearson's paper a book symposium was conducted in which the following members of the Association briefly discussed the respective books here indicated: Hine. Modern organization. Reviewed by Crispi's Memoirs and the recent literature Goldmark. Fatigue and efficiency. Reviewed Antin. The promised land. Reviewed by Brieux. La femme seule. Reviewed by Co- The great analysis. Reviewed by Josephine Weyl. The great democracy. Reviewed by The PRESIDENT: Before inducting into office the president-elect I shall ask the secretary whether there are any announcements to be made or if any new business is to come up at this time? Is there any business for the Council to consider? Dr. ANDREWS: There are some resolutions from the Documents Round Table to come before the Council and perhaps cther routine work. The PRESIDENT: You have heard the result of the election. I shall ask Mr. Gardner M. Jones and Mr. Harrison W. Craver to show the president-elect the way to the platform. (The committee escorted Mr. Anderson to the platform.) Mr. President-elect, it is with special personal satisfaction that I have announced to you the result unanimously made by this conference in choosing you to the honorable position of president. I am personally gratified in that you represent, I think, so splendidly many of the elements TION ent or New Tr es cent which have been talked about during this meeting. You are yourself a graduate of a library school, yet you have sympathy with those who have not attained to that distinction. You have been associated with a great scientific library, you have been in charge of a medium-sized library and are now at the head of the largest public library in the world; and yet many of us have had evidences that you have the deepest and warmest sympathy for the small and struggling library, no matter where it may be. Mr. President-elect, the retiring board of officers received this gavel not as an emblem of authority, but as a symbol of service. As such we commit it to your care for the next year. For the retiring board of officers I may say, in the words of Wynken DeWorde in one of his colophons, "And now we make an end. If we have done well, we have done that which we would have desired; and if but meanly and slenderly, we yet have done that which we could attain unto." The wish goes from the ex-president to the president that the most successful administration in the history of the Association may be the one which is about to begin. (Mr. Legler then handed the gavel to Mr. Anderson and retired from the platform.) PRESIDENT ANDERSON: Ladies and gentlemen, fellow members of the Association: In the first place, I want to express my heartfelt thanks for the gracious things the retiring president has just been pleased to say concerning my humble self. Furthermore, I have to thank him for giving me an opportunity to correct a mistake which has been current in this Association for some twenty years, namely, that I am the graduate of a library school. I was at the Albany library school-more years ago than I care to tell-between seven and eight months. My money ran out and I had to get a job. I did not even complete the first year. That is a reflection on me, not upon the library school. The exigencies of trains and luncheons would make it unfair if not cruel for me to detain you here this morning with a speech and I shall make none. But I want to beg you on this occasion to forget and forgive the disagreeable things said or done by the officers-elect in the heat of a bitter partisan campaign. (LaughterThere was no opposition ticket.) Seriously, I want to express to you all, not merely for myself but for every member of the incoming executive board and the incoming members of the Council, our appreciation of the honor you have conferred upon us and of the responsibilities you have placed upon our shoulders. We can only hope to maintain-and it will require a struggle and great and arduous work on our part to maintain-the high standard set by our predecessors. I thank you. If there is nothing further to come before us the Conference will stand adjourned. ADJOURNED SINE DIE. EXECUTIVE BOARD Meeting of June 23, 1913 Meeting called to order by President Several matters of routine business were Upon motion of Mr. Anderson, seconded by Dr. Putnam, Mrs. H. L. Elmendorf was elected member of the Publishing Board to succeed herself for a term of three years. In behalf of the Committee on International Relations, Dr. Putnam reported that with such information as it had been able to gather the committee felt unable to Present: President Anderson, Miss Eastman, Messrs. Andrews, Wellman and Craver. Mr. Wellman presented his resignation as non-official member in view of his election to the office of first vice-president, which, upon motion of Dr. Andrews, was accepted. Upon motion of Mr. Craver, it was unanimously voted that W. N. C. Carlton be elected to the Executive Board to fill the unexpired term of Mr. Wellman. Mr. Carlton was called to the meeting and took his place as a member of the Board. A meeting place for 1914 was next considered. Miss Edith A. Phelps, librarian of the Carnegie library of Oklahoma City, appeared before the board and invited the Association to meet in Oklahoma City, her invitation being seconded by the Oklahoma Library Association and other or ganizations of the State. Invitations were received also by letter from the convention bureaus of New Orleans, Nashville, Wilmington, Del., Milwaukee, and other places. After informal discussion it was voted that the Secretary be instructed to investigate facilities for holding the conference at Madison, Wis., and if, in the opinion of the president and secretary, conditions at Madison are not favorable for a meeting, that Mackinac and Ottawa Beach be investigated in the order here named. Invitations from the authorities of the Panama-Pacific Exposition to hold the conference at San Francisco in 1915 were read and from the California Library Association to the same effect, Mr. Everett R. Perry, of Los Angeles, bearing the invitation from the latter association. Invitations were also received from the library authorities of Seattle, seconded by the business organizations of that city and by the convention bureaus of other cities of the Pacific Northwest. It was voted to re fer this information to the next Executive Board. Mr. William Stetson Merrill presented the following report in behalf of the Committee on code for classifiers, which, upon motion, was accepted as a report of prog. ress, and the request for an appropriation of $20 referred to the meeting of the Executive Board in January. The Committee on code for classifiers begs to present a report of progress. During the past year no general meeting of the Committee has been held, but the chairman has been in correspondence with several members of the Committee and considerable data have been collected for the proposed Manual for classifiers. Messrs. Bay and Merrill are more immediately concerned with this section of the work and over three hundred points have been assembled for future consideration. An appropriation of twenty dollars ($20.00) to cover typewriting, postage and stationery is requested. Respectfully submitted, (Signed) WM. STETSON MERRILL, Chairman. At the request of the secretary a trans fer of funds was authorized as follows: From the contingency fund to conference fund, $75, and to miscellaneous fund $75, leaving a balance in the contingency fund of $95. Upon motion of Dr. Andrews, it was voted that members joining the Associ ation after the annual conference shall only be required to pay one-half year's dues together with the usual initiation fee of $1. Consideration of the question of issuing the annual hand-book in biographical section form was postponed until the next meeting of the Executive Board. A letter was read from Dr. Frank P. Hill, suggesting that a special committee be appointed to consider the matter of par ticipating in the proposed Leipzig Exposi tion and to ascertain the cost of such par ticipation as well as the possibility of securing a creditable exhibit from American libraries. It was voted that a special com mittee of three on this subject be ap pointed by the president, which committee It was unanimously voted that an appro- A report was submitted from the Committee on cost and method of cataloging, but owing to the lack of time for proper consideration the secretary was instructed to have the report typewritten and copies sent to the respective members of the Executive Board. At the request of the Committee that two other members be added to the Committee, one of them to be located in Chicago, the other to be the head cataloger of one of the public libraries tak ing part in the investigation, the president appointed the following persons: J. C. M. Hanson and Margaret Mann. The request of the Committee for an appropriation of not to exceed $50 was referred to the January meeting of the Executive Board. The report is as follows: REPORT OF THE COMMITTEE ON CATALOGING The present report is preliminary only. Before a final report can be made a more detailed inquiry must be undertaken of the way in which the work is handled in libraries of various types. The methods used in the libraries that have taken part in the present investigation vary to a considerable degree, and do not always seem to lend themselves to an accurate classification by character or size of library; in some cases this is possible, for instance when we find that the receipt of much duplicate material in the large public libraries having extensive systems of branch libraries has developed a method of handling these that is almost uniform for all. One element which disturbs the cataloging work in these libraries is that the withdrawal and cancellation of the records of lost and worn-out books is done by the cataloging departments. Five of the twenty libraries do not at present readily lend themselves to comparison in all respects with the others, the Library of Congress and the New York public library on account of their size and complicated organization, the libraries of Harvard University and the University of Chicago because of the disturbances caused by present work of reorganization and recataloging, and the New York state library on account of its rapid growth since the fire two years ago. In other libraries recataloging goes on simultaneously with the current work, but it does not cause the same disturbances as in the cases mentioned. While most libraries count classification and shelf-listing as parts of the cataloging, only four include accessioning, and three do not include either of the four processes mentioned under point 2 in the questionnaire sent out by the committee. Three libraries state expressly that the assignment of subject headings is done by the cataloging force, but this is probably also the case with some who do not mention the fact. In one case the reference and cataloging work are combined in one department; in general, reference work seems to be the catalogers' favorite side line. In some libraries the determination of headings and the form of entry is determined by the heads of the department, in others all the original work is done by the assistants and afterwards revised, while in at least one case such work as classification and the assignment of subject headings is done by specialists, each handling his particular subject. Two or three libraries employ a special assistant for the cataloging of serial publications. Two libraries have all statistical recording done by a special assistant or clerk. Whether a library prints its cards or has them written or typewritten in several copies, does not seem to influence the method of work except at the final point, but the growing use of cards printed by some other library has introduced an eiement that did not exist when any of the libraries taking part in the investigation were organized. The cost of cataloging can not be determined until a definite unit has been agreed upon. The way to reach such agreement might be in line with the method employed by the Boston public library, where a considerable number of volumes were set aside for this investigation and the time and money spent on each work carefully computed. By employing a similar way of investigating not only the cost, but also the routine gone through with a book in a number of libraries on its way from the unpacking room to the shelves, some definite unit might be found. The work of the committee has only begun; it should be planned to go much more into details than the present questionnaire indicates. The purpose of the committee should be twofold; to find out whether a method of handling the routine with a minimum expenditure of time could be worked out that could be recommended as standard, and to study how the work might be so arranged as to be made in some degree less mechanical to those who are capable of more or less independent handling of literary material for the purpose of preparing it for use by readers in libraries. AKSEL G. S. JOSEPHSON, Questionnaire 1. Give a short sketch of your catalog department indicating the processes into which the work is divided. 2. How many of the following items do you include as part of cataloging?: (a) Accessioning. (b) Classification. (c) Shelf-listing. (d) Preparation for the shelves. 3. Of how many persons does your catalog. ing force consist and how is it graded? 4. What are the minimum and maximum salaries in each grade and division of your cataloging force? 5. What was the total amount expended for salaries for the catalog depart ment in 1912? 6. a. How many of the assistants in the catalog department spend full time on the cataloging work? b. What other work are these engaged in in other departments of the library? 7. a. How many volumes did you add to your library during 1912? b. How many of these were added as new titles to your catalog? c. How many of these were on printed cards from the Library of Congress or from other libraries? 8. What do you estimate that it cost your library in 1912 to catalog a book, including accessioning, classification, shelf-listing and preparation for the shelves? 9. Give any special information about your library that will, enable the commit tee to understand particular phases of your cataloging work. Libraries Included in the Investigation University and Reference Libraries John Crerar Library. Library of Congress. New York Public Library, Reference Department. New York State Library. Public Libraries Boston Public Library. Carnegie Library, Pittsburgh. |