College and Research Libraries FREDERICK G. KILGOUR The Econoinic Goal of Library Automation A steadily increasing rate of productivity slwuld be the economic goal of library automation. Such productivity will be achieved only by development of a new library technology. Thereby, rise in library costs, ·which are going up exponentially at a frightening rate, will be brought into line with cost rises in the economy as a whole. AcADEMIC LIBRARIES are in crisis, and it appears that the larger the library, the larger the crisis. The major need for charting a course to a successful future is definition of fruitful objectives. Such objectives as library support of and co- ordination with its institution's programs are no longer sufficient; these rational- ized goals of the past are inadequate for the future. To establish useful system objectives, much research must be done to determine needs of students and fac- ulty.1 For instance, it has been custom- ary for academic librarians to speak of faculty library use as though each fac- ulty member has basically the same needs, but a recent Harvard report re- veals that 65.7 per cent of the Harvard tenured faculty does not feel that the Harvard libraries are one of three most atb·active or three least ~ttractive ~fea­ tures of the Harvard environment. 2 Can it be that for two-thirds of the Harvard faculty the quality of the count y's larg- est university library system does not diHer significantly from that of other in- stitutions? 1 A. Graham Mackenzie, " Systems Analysis of a University Library," Program; N ews of Computers in British Libraries, II (April 1968), 7-14. 2 Harvard University. Faculty of Arts and Sciences. Report of the Committee on R ecruitment and Retention of Faculty (Cambridge: Harvard University, 1968), p. 69. Mr. Kilgour is Director in Ohio College Library Center, Columbus, Ohio . Although the crisis in which academic libraries find themselves is typically of library character, there is one portion which they share with their institutions, namely, "the massive financial crisis that threatens a major sector of the nation's institutions of higher education," as are- cent AA UP report has put it. 3 The fol- lowing exposition will define an econom- ic goal-in contrast to a system object- ive-of library computerization that when attained will relieve libraries of their fi- nancial plight. THE FINANCIAL CRISIS William G. Bowen has recently de- picted and skillfully analyzed the finan- cial problem of institutions of higher ed- ucation with emphasis on private uni- versities.4 He found that private univer- sities experienced an annual rise in cost per student of 7.5 per cent, and he em- phasized the fact that much of his analy- sis "applies, in varying degrees, to pub- lic as well as private institutions, and to colleges as well as universities." This compound rate of increase at 7.5 per cent per annum compares with a 2 per cent increase in the general economy. 3 William Baumol and Peggy Heim , "On the Finan- cial Prospects for Higher Education: The Annual Re- port on the Economic Status of the Profession, 1967- 68," AAUP Bulletin, LIV (June 1968) , 182-241. 4 William G. Bowen, The Economics of the Major Private Universities (Berkeley, California: The Car- negie Commission on the Future of Higher Education, 1968). I 307 308 I College & Research Libraries • July 1969 I I -180 0 Average for 1 1 0 -170 all private ,' universities , , , , !160 ll') , , , , , u; 150 ' ll') O'l ::::::..140 , , , , , , ,, ..... . , ............. . . ... ... ... ,, ....... . , ..... .. 58 60 Economy- wide Cost Index 62 64 FIGURE I 66 (Fiscal Years) Direct Costs Per Student in Private Universities, Compared with an Economy-wide Cost Index, 1955-56 to 1965-66 (Courtesy AA UP Bulletin) Bowen ascribes a higher rate of cost rises in higher education to the fact that the technology of education has not in- creased productivity of educators. In the general economy output per man hour of labor input has been rising steadily at approximately 2.5 per cent per year, in contradistinction to essentially no rise in productivity in higher education. Still, rising salaries and higher standards of living that reflect increased productivity have forced up salaries of educators. Although there are varying views on effectiveness of an innovative technology of education to increase productivity of educators, most authorities feel that there will be no significant increase in productivity in the foreseeable future. Bowen estimates that in a "typical" ma- jor private university, expenditures per student will rise from $3,500 in 1965-66 to $7,210 in 1975-76; during the same decade total e ducational and general ex- penditures for the institution will rise from $24,500,000 to $70,658,000. He com- ments, "These projected increases are not just large-they are staggering, by almost anyone's definition of that word." Baumol and Heim have estimated that if the rate of increase of cost per stu- dent at private institutions continues un- changed for the next forty years, it will rise to nearly sixteen times above the present level. 5 It would appear that bankruptcy 5 Op. cit. (Reference 3), p. 184. Economic Goal of Library Autornation I 309 would occur before costs could rise to such overwhelming heights. Certainly presidents and boards of trustees would avert financial bankruptcy, but in so do- ing, they would just as certainly bank- rupt their educational and research pro- grams. Indeed, there is some evidence that academic libraries may .already have begun to fail to meet their obliga- tions, for in the five-year period from 1960-61 to 1965-66, the number of vol- umes per student in American college and university libraries declined from 52.4 to 45.8. 6 Although Bowen is pessimistic about the realization of cost benefits from in- novative educational technology, he points out that there is one area that justifies optimism-the library. He cau- tions, however, that "savings will be re- alized only after there have been con- siderable expenditures on experimental efforts, equipment, retraining of staff, and so on." TECHNOLOGY AND LIBRARIES The largest and most expensive ma- chines in libraries are heating systems, air-conditioning systems, and elevators, and none of these machines can be said to be "innovative technology." An inno- vative technology is a technological sys- tem which is continually being devel- oped. An edge-notched punch card sys- tem is not an innovative technology; such a system does not experience de- velopment on a technological level. In- troduction of an edge-notched punched card system will effect a one-step in- crease in productivity, but it does not possess the potential for continual de- velopment accompanied by continual in- crease in productivity. Similarly, column punch cards with unit record machines were not an innovative technology; the present-day sorter is basically the same machine doing the same task, albeit 6 The Bo wk er Annual, 1968 ( N P-W York: R. R. Bowker Co. , 1968 ) , p. 42. faster, that Hollerith's first sorter did in 1886. Computer technology is a wholly new and truly innovative technology that superseded, but did not evolve from, unit record equipment much in the manner that printing superseded the scribe. An innovative technology that steadily increases productivity of librar- ians cannot be said to exist. Indeed, li- brary operating costs per student rose at an annual average of just over 5 per cent from 1959-60 to 1965-66.7 The technique of descriptive catalog- ing in the twentieth century does not differ in any essential way from that done during the Middle Ages, except that there is a great deal more of it. To be sure, the twentieth-century cataloger conforms to more complicated rules, and the typewriter has replaced the ink pen. In contradistinction to the lack of in- novative technology in the production of catalog entries is the technology that has immensely increased the productiv- ity of those reproducing the entries. Lit- tle is known of the rate of work of scribes, but an example of rapid work is the production of a ninth-century manu- script containing 109 ten-by-eight-inch leaves, having twenty lines per page. Two scribes produced this work at the rate of fifteen pages per day per scribe. 8 Mi- chael Clapham has expressed the view that the first half century of printing from movable type produced more books probably than all European scribes had produced in the previous milleni- um.9 In the nineteenth century, the in- troduction of the power press and type- composing machines further enhanced productivity. In 1857, a power, rotary Hoe newspaper press could produce 20,- 000 impressions an hour, but required twenty-five men and boys to operate 7 Ibid., p. 43. 8 Florence Edler De Roover, "The Scriptorium," in James Westfall Thompson, The Medieval Library (New York: Hafner Publishing Co., 1965), p. 607. 9 Michael Clapham, "Printing," in Charles Singer, et al., eds. A History of Technology (New York: Oxford University Press, 1957) III, 377-411. 310 I College & Research Libraries • July 1969 it. 10 Today, widely used power presses can produce 20,000 impressions an hour, each containing sixteen pages with twice as many lines as those produced by the scribes mentioned above. Such a press requires three men to operate and a larger group to compose the text from which printing is accomplished. If it is assumed that twenty men in all are in- volved full time in composing and print- ing on such a press, their productivity is approximately two thousand times great- er than that of the fast-writing scribes of the ninth century. In recent years the printing and publishing industry has en- joyed an annual growth in productivity , of 2.7 per cent,11 an achievement which doubly exacerbates the library crisis. PRODUCTIVITY Basing his exposition on the work of Solomon Fabricant, George Soule de- scribes changes in productivity as com- ing from: ( 1) changes in technology, economic organization, and manage- ment skills; ( 2) changes in quality and aptitude of the worker; and ( 3) changes in machinery or equipment supplied the worker. 12 Of these various ingredients technological innovation is certainly the most important, although technological innovation by itself cannot achieve in- creased productivity. Output per man hour of labor input is the generally accepted measure of pro- ductivity. To increase productivity in li- braries, librarians must employ an inno- vative technology that has the potential for dynamically increasing productivity at an essentially steady percentage rate at least equal to the rate of increases in costs. The only technology which can achieve these goals is computerization with its attendant facets, particularly comprehensive system design. 10 W. T. Berry, "Printing and Related Trades," in ibid., v, 683-715. 11 Clopper Almon, The American Economy to 1975 (New York: Harper & Row, 1966) , p. 126. 1 2 George Soule, The New Science of Economics; an Introduction (New York: Viking, 1964), p. 142. Since the 1920s, librarians have ap- plied techniques of scientific manage- ment with varying degrees of enthusi- asm and success with the hope of reduc- ing costs. After a third of a century, however, per-student costs are rising about twice as rapidly as unit costs in general. Fundamental to the concept of scientific management is the establish- ment of a level of productivity to be ex- pected from an incumbent in a particu- lar job; in effect, a ceiling of productiv- ity is set for a worker. Only if such ceilings were to exist throughout the en- tire economy could scientific manage- ment alone effect a real, if limited, re- duction in costs. Introduction of an in- novative technology into libraries will re- move static ceilings, although it should not be forgotten that techniques of sci- entific management can continue to im- prove efficiency in a milieu of increasing rates of productivity. It is well known that the preparation of volumes for the shelves incurs a sig- nificant percentage of total library op- erating expenditure, and it appears that the larger the library the higher the unit cost.13 Clearly a fruitful area for effective increase in productivity is in cataloging operations. However, computerization of the reproduction of nineteenth-century forms of catalogs, namely, card catalogs and bookform catalogs, will not produce significant increases in productivity. What is needed is the mechanization of the cataloging process itself. To increase productivity of cataloging operations rather than merely to im- prove efficiency will require mechaniza- tion of descriptive cataloging, subject classification, and subject indexing. The prospect for computerization of subject heading and subject classification activ- ity is not particularly bright, for a ma- jor ingredient, efficient machine transla- 13 Catherine MacQuarrie, "Cost Survey: Cost of Ordering, Cataloging, and Preparations in Southern California Libraries," Library Resources & Technical Services, VI (Fall 1962), 337-350. f Economic Goal of Library Automation I 311 tion, is lacking, and its successful de- velopment does not appear to be im- minent. However, major strides in mech- anization of descriptive cataloging can be taken in the immediate future. Some years ahead lies the ultimate goal of mechanically reading the title page of a book into a file organized so that the user can retrieve the reference more readily than from a bookform or card catalog. Two principal innovative com- ponents are required for an activation of mechanized descriptive cataloging. One is a logical file organization in which to store text on a title page and from which the text can be retrieved rapidly and efficiently. The second is a mechanical device for reading title pages and converting characters thereon to digital form in a computer. It now ap- pears that the first-mentioned develop- ment will precede the second, but prior to the development of efficient optical character recognition title pages can be transposed manually as has been done for centuries. Because of such great potential for in- creasing productivity in library opera- tions as this example of the mechaniza- tion of the catalog reveals, it is most de- sirable that any library computerization project should be an initial step in the direction of increased productivity ·and not solely an improvement in efficiency of an isolated procedure. To assure that computerization moves in a desirable di- rection, it will be necessary first to mod- el the desired future system.14• 15 For 14 Richard DeGennaro, "The Development and Ad- ministration of Automated Systems in Academic Li- braries, "Journal of Library Automation, I (March 1968), 75-91. u Frederick G. Kilgour, "Systems Concepts and Libraries," College & Research Libraries, XXVIII (May 1967), 167-170. instance, an on-line file of catalog rec- ords should not mimic a card catalog, but rather should be organized in such a way as to facilitate future mechanical descriptive cataloging. Much education, research, and devel- opment will be required to produce and operate library systems that will possess the characteristic of increasing produc- tivity. Education will be required for users, staff, and management. There will also be the need for varying degrees of internal and external library reorganiza- tion; it seems most likely that it will be necessary to develop formal federations, or networks, of libraries to enable the vast majority of libraries to participate in computerization. Although libraries are accustomed to investing large amounts of money in buildings and in book holdings, it has not been custom- ary to invest large sums in machines. Undoubtedly such investments will oc- cur in the future, and may very well in- volve libraries in heretofore little-used practices, such as large, long-term bank loans. CONCLUSION The electronic digital computer con- stitutes for libraries an· innovative tech- nology that will enable libraries to in- crease productivity of staff and thereby decelerate the exponentiality of rise in costs and eventually to bring cost rises into line with those in the economy as a whole. To activate such a program it will be necessary to adopt the goal of increased productivity; an effective route out of the burgeoning financial crisis will be along the path of increasing pro- ductivity. • •