The Development of Technical Services Training

Abstract

I BEGIN with Robert Frost:Ants are a curious race;One crossing with hurried treadThe body of one of their deadIsn't given a moment's arrest-Seems not even impressed.But he no doubt reports to anyWith whom he crosses antennae,And they no doubt reportTo the higher up at court.Then word goes forth in Formic:Death's come to Jerry McCormic,Our selfless forager Jerry.Will the special JanizaryWhose office it is to buryThe dead of the commissaryGo bring him home to his people.Lay him in state on a sepal.Wrap him for shroud in a petal.Embalm him with ichor of nettle.This is the word of your Queen.And presently on the sceneAppears a solemn mortician;And taking formal positionWith feelers calmly atwiddle,Seizes the dead by the middle,And heaving him high in the air,Carries him out of there.No one stands round to stare.It is nobody else's affair.It couldn't be called ungentle.But how thoroughly departmental.How thoroughly departmental! The chain of command to the queen; the detailed routine for every move of the rank and file. So it goes also in the technical services. The chain of command to the chief; the detailed routines and rules for the order librarian, the serials librarian, the catalog librarian.Now departmentalism-the ant's eye view;-works well enough perhaps when we set up a department of technical services within a library. But can we carry this departmentalism into the world of the mind? At once we face at least two groups of questions:1. The chain of command: Is the idea of technical services an intellectual concept or is it simply an administrative device? Is technical services a discipline such as mathematics or the classics; or is it simply the administrative union of some groups of people with various skills ? What of the various units within the department? The fine line between ordering and book selection-who can see it clearly? Does cataloging include classification ? Where do subject headings fall ? Should the cataloging student deal only with cataloging tools-e.g., Sears and Dewey-or should he also learn of general reference tools-e.g., C.B.I, or D.N.B. ? What are serials? Cataloging or order work? Finally, how much of what we call technical services may most profitably appear in the curriculum as segments of other courses-e.g., library administration courses?2. The routines and rules: Can-or should-routines and rules be taught in school? Are they the stuffgraduate study is made of? The techniques of catalog card reproduction change even as we talk of them. Book dealers come and go. Serial routines of yesterday no longer do the job well. Apart from a few basic facts about cataloging and classification, is there not much in the technical services that might better be learned on the job, or that is so fluid it cannot be taught at any one time in any one course?The world of the library and the world of the mind: our two questions raise an ancient dilemma:The history of the teaching of the technical services goes back at least to Melvil Dewey at Columbia in 1887. Dewey had described his proposed School of Library Economy at the A.L.A. Convention in Buffalo in 1883 and asked for comments. Poole had at once obliged:I think [Mr. Dewey] is in error in stating that there is now no institution in this country for educating librarians. I have the impression that there is an excellent one in Boston, known as the Boston Public Library; there is another in Boston called the Boston Athenaeum, and still another in the adjacent city of Cambridge, called the Harvard College Library . . . There is no training school for educating librarians like a well-managed library,1Cutter had a characteristic reply:Undoubtedly it is well that a librarian should have worked in a library; there are some things which he will never understand unless he has. …