Manual of Library Economy: Third and Memorial EditionBrown, James Duff
Science
Manual of Library Economy: Third and Memorial Edition
Brown, James Duff
Libraries -- Great Britain -- Handbooks, manuals, etc.; Library science -- Great Britain -- Handbooks, manuals, etc.
Owing to the limited prospects the work
offers the librarian has a moral obligation to see that appointees who
are unsuitable are encouraged to seek other occupations as soon as their
unfitness for librarianship is proven. Where both sexes are employed
exactly the same type of qualifications should be required from each,
and equal remuneration should be paid. The smaller salaries sometimes
offered to girls have ill results both upon the individual candidates
and upon the library.
=84. Hours.=--The last exhaustive inquiry into the hours worked by
municipal library assistants was made by the Library Assistants’
Association in 1911, who embodied its results in a valuable report.
Hours are naturally influenced by the prevailing length of working-time
in commerce and in other walks of life. The average number worked in
libraries in 1908 was 48 weekly; in 1911 it was 45·22; but the tendency
is to make it 42 hours. The difficulties which face a librarian in
arranging a time-sheet are that he has usually too small a staff, and
cannot afford a larger one, and that the library is in many or all of
its departments open from twelve to fourteen hours daily. This involves
evening work on several days in the week, and means that the hours are
irregular and broken. At the same time the nature of library work is
exacting, and much more efficient work can be expected from a
seven-hours’, or even shorter, day than from a longer one. Study,
recreation and social experience are absolutely necessary for successful
work; and time-sheets should be arranged to make these possible. There
is no excuse whatever for the at one time prevailing time-sheets which
required assistants to work from about 9 a.m. to 9 p.m. with an
interval of 1½ hours for dinner and a similar interval for tea. The
librarian whose staff is so small that these hours are necessary to keep
the library open is attempting at the expense of the health and whole
natural life of his staff to do more work than the community has a right
to expect. Even with the seven-hour day the broken hours involved form
the least attractive feature of library work. The time-sheet suggested
by the Library Assistants’ Association is given as a practical solution
of some of the difficulties we have enumerated--not as an ideal but as
the result of experience. It provides for a half-holiday weekly and for
hours of recreation and study. It should be the aim to make the use of
the sheet regular, so that every assistant may know what evenings, for
example, he has at his disposal throughout the year. Modifications are
sometimes made during the summer months, when the work is slacker, in
the direction of giving the assistants more free time.
SUGGESTED TIME-SHEET (LIBRARY ASSISTANTS’ ASSOCIATION)
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