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LIBRES 2.10 Feature Article

1. On the Frequency Distribution of Recent Time and Cost Studies
   of Some Key Library Processes. (361 lines)
      by Alfred Willis

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COPYRIGHT to this article is the property of Alfred Willis

         On the Frequency Distribution
        of Recent Time and Cost Studies
         of Some Key Library Processes


Alfred Willis
Architecture Library
Kent State University



I.   Technical Services, an Unexpected
     Underdog?

     Whereas a century ago libraries may have
been managed by "librarians" so described in
the simplest of terms, the growth of these
institutions into the complex organizations
that many of them have by now become has
entailed the definition of numerous
professional sub-categories: "reference
librarians," "cataloging librarians,"
"acquisitions librarians," "administrative
librarians," etc.  It is not quite clear
whether this trend toward increasing
specialization will continue indefinitely into
the future.  But what is clear is that many
librarians -- especially technical services
librarians -- perceive the trend to have
resulted already in a polarization of
professional activities into "public services"
(chiefly reference-related) and "technical
services" spheres.  Moreover, "technical
services" seem to be perceived as the sphere of
decidedly lesser prestige or even usefulness,
and the one more subject to administrative
budget-cutting initiatives which may or may not
be grounded in rational schemes for the
optimization of library processes (Ref. 1).
     There can be little doubt that technical
services units in general, and cataloging units
in particular, are widely regarded as cost
centers ripe for reduction.  This notion seems
to underpin not only such recent proposals as
reductions of subject analysis, shortcuts in
description, and elimination of authority work
in order to generate transferable surpluses in
cataloging-unit budgets by reducing their
operating expenditures, but also moves to
substitute for positions in cataloging
departments new positions elsewhere in a
library organization or to "cross-train"
catalogers to function as part-time reference
workers.  It has become pervasive enough in
library culture to attract the attention of
public-services librarians, who are now seeing
how time-and-motion cost-cutting initiatives in
cataloging units can extend well beyond the
laudable goal of improving a library's
cost/benefit ratio to a point where cataloging
cuts actually result in a dramatic loss of any
potential benefit to library users.
     Thomas Mann, a reference librarian at the
Library of Congress and an unusually articulate
discussant of this notion, has pointed out in a
recent position paper numerous ways in which
the declines in cataloging quality that stem
from misguided or overzealous efforts to reduce
cataloging costs cannot but have detrimental
effects on the quality of reference services
available in his and other libraries.  He
points out, for example, that such strategies
as "minimal-level cataloging" and "speed
cataloging" inevitably result in the creation
of records difficult or impossible to retrieve
by logical searches on traditional descriptive
and subject headings, or even by probabilistic
searches by keywords (Ref. 2).
     The notion driving such cataloging
reductions as Mann critiques -- that cataloging
units are essentially cost centers -- runs
quite counter, of course, to consensus in the
literature on managing library processes.  In
this literature, cataloging units are squarely
identified not as cost centers but as loci of
value-adding activities (Ref. 3).  Although
cataloging processes can certainly be
optimized, cataloging costs cannot be
effectively reduced at any cost.  This is
because any proposed reduction entails a cost
as surely as any strategy of optimization
entails a benefit.  This cost is realized in a
reduction in value of the cataloging product
(i.e., diminished retrievability of records and
hence of the documents for which the records
stand), and library patrons inevitably pay the
price of this cost in ineffectual searches for
library materials.
     Yet this inevitable result of cost-cutting
in cataloging units runs exactly counter to
current librarianship's objective of assuring
patrons' access to materials whether or not
owned by a local library.  Clearly, the source
of the notion of cataloging units as major cost
centers inherently subject to drastic cost-
cutting measures can hardly be found in any
rational theory of library management.
Identifying the source of the notion of
cataloging and other technical-services units
as cost centers thus presents a puzzle.



II.  A Possible Solution to the Puzzle?

     A simple analysis of the recent literature
in library science suggests that the parameters
of that literature itself as a possible source.
Perhaps it lies in an over-representation of
studies of cataloging and other technical-
services costs relative to those of public-
services costs.  In order to investigate this
possibility, the cumulative volumes of Library
Literature from 1980 to 1991 (inclusive) were
examined to discover studies of the costs
assignable to these and other library
processes.
     The original working hypothesis was that
more citations would be found to studies of the
costs of cataloging than to studies of the
costs of reference services.  This hypothesis
was confirmed, as inspection of the following
table shows.  (The first column gives the
volume year of Library Literature; the second
column gives the number of citations found
under the heading, "Cataloging--Time and Cost
Studies"; and the third column gives the number
of citations found under the heading,
"Reference Services--Time and Cost Studies.")


YEAR     Cat      Ref

1980     2        1
1981     3        1
1982     0        2
1983     4        1
1984     3        2
1985     0        1
1986     1        0
1987     1        0
1988     5        0
1989     2        1
1990     1        0
1991     6        2
       ___      ___

TOTAL   28       11


In only two years out of the past twelve did
the number of cited studies of reference-
services costs exceed that of cited studies of
cataloging costs.  Cumulatively, there were
more than twice as many cited studies of
cataloging costs as cited sudies of reference-
services costs.  (It is of incidental interest
that, of the total of eleven cited studies
dealing with the costs or cost-effectiveness of
reference work, four dealt specifically with
online searching (a highly technical function)
and only seven with more general aspects of
such work.)  Using Student's t-statistic, this
difference can be shown to be significant at
the 99% confidence level (n = 39; t = 2.4951, >
f-table look-up = 2.423).
     It is extremely unlikely that the
distribution found can be due to mere chance.



III. Context as an Important Qualifier

     In order to put this conclusion into its
proper perspective, further counts were made of
citations in the same volume years of Library
Literature.  The following table reports the
number of cited studies found under these
headings: "Acquisitions--Time and Cost
Studies"; "Administration--Time and Cost
Studies"; "Interlibrary Loans--Time and Cost
Studies"; and "Information [Storage and
Retrieval] Systems--Time and Cost Studies."


YEAR    Acq   Adm   ILL   Sys

1980    3     0     2     3
1981    3     0     5     3
1982    2     0     3     6
1983    0     0     5     6
1984    4     1     2     4
1985    0     1     1     4
1986    0     0     3     4
1987    0     1     4     3
1988    0     0     2     2
1989    1     0     2     2
1990    1     0     5     3
1991    7     0     4     1
      ___   ___   ___   ___

TOTAL  18     2    38    41

     The sketch histogram below clearly
delineates the pattern of emphasis placed by
the library-science research literature of the
past twelve years on identifying the costs
and/or cost-effectiveness of six of the most
important contemporary library processes.


     *
40   *
     *     *
     *     *
30   *     *
     *     *     *
     *     *     *
20   *     *     *
     *     *     *     *
     *     *     *     *           *
10   *     *     *     *           *
     *     *     *     *     *
     *     *     *     *     *
 0   *     *     *     *     *           *

     Sys   ILL   Cat   Acq   Ref   Onl   Adm
      |     |     |     |      \  /       |
    29.7% 27.5% 20.3% 13.0%    8.0%      1.4%

     Explanation of the histogram:

     Systems                   41 citations
     ILL                       38 citations
     Cataloging                28 citations
     Acquisitions              18 citations
     Reference (general)  7 \_ 11 citations
     Reference (online)   4 /
     Administration             2 citations


     The recent literature of librarianship
thus reflects a strong interest in the costs
associated with systems, interlibrary loans,
and cataloging; a moderate interest in the
costs associated with acquisitions and
reference work; and very little interests in
the costs of library administration.
     Considering studies of all six of these
topics as a context, the difference of
proportion found in the literature between
studies of cataloging costs and studies of
reference-services costs shrinks in
significance.  Other topics have commanded both
more and less attention recently than have
cataloging and reference-services costs.
Pairwise tests of proportions reveal only three
significant differences in the relative
representation of the six topics in the sample
-- and these were differences significant only
at the 90% confidence level!  Interlibrary loan
costs were significantly more frequently
studied than reference-services costs; systems
costs were also significantly more frequently
reported than reference-services costs; and
systems costs were significantly more
frequently studied than acquisitions costs.
     These differences may be partially -- even
largely -- explained by the greater ease
(especially in automated environments) of
gathering cost-related data on systems,
interlibary loans, cataloging, and acquisitions
as opposed to reference and administration.
But it might also reflect variations in the
degree of willingness of librarians as library-
scientists to study, and publicize their
findings about, the costs of these six
processes.


IV.  The Solution Revisited and a New Dilemma

     In any event, it is clear that a search of
the recent library literature for ideas on
where or how to cut a library's operational
costs involves a rather higher probability of
finding articles on, say, cataloging costs than
of finding articles on reference costs.  This
probability will be higher not only when the
recent library literature is considered as a
whole but almost always as well when any one
year's worth of that literature is considered
individually.  Now, it is easy to imagine how
repeatedly finding more information on the
costs of cataloging than on the costs of so
visible an activity as reference services could
lead an administrator, albeit subconsciously,
to this inadvertent conclusion: that cataloging
units are not the loci of value-adding
processes that they are actually known to be
but rather the cost centers that they are
statistically depicted as being by the library
literature.  In life occasionally as often in
art, appearance can triumph over substance and
fool the eye of even the sharpest observer.
     If correcting the perception of cataloging
units as cost centers does depend on changing
the portrayal of cataloging in the literature
(i.e., on changing the relative proportion of
published library cost studies on cataloging to
cost studies focused on reference or
administrative activities), this goal might be
more readily accomplished by reporting _less_
research on the costs of cataloging than by
encouraging the reporting of _more_ research on
the costs of other library processes.
     Meanwhile, instead of focusing on the
costs of cataloging, library scientists
interested in cataloging might serve their own
interests better by addressing not the costs of
that activity but rather the costs of reference
services -- or, as Mann has begun doing from
the perspective of a reference provider, the
costs _to_ public services of any proposed
reductions of cataloging costs that a
superficial apprehension of their earlier
studies may have inspired.  Such research would
put studies of cataloging and other technical-
services costs into a more accurate perspective
while at the same time shifting the current
discussion on reference services from issues of
absolute effectiveness to issues of
effectiveness relative to efficiency.



Ref. 1.   Eskoz, Patricia A. "Librarians of a
          Lesser God: Conversations with
          Technical Services Administrators."
          _Technicalities_ 9 (September 1989):
          14-17.

Ref. 2.   Mann, Thomas. _Cataloging Quality, LC
          Priorities, and Models of the
          Library's Future_. Washington, DC:
          Library of Congress, 1991.

Ref. 3    Taylor, Robert S. _Value-added
          Processes in Information Systems_.
          Norwood, NJ: Ablex, 1986.