Size of Cataloging Staffs in Academic Libraries

ALTHOUGH some progress has been made • in studies of the cost of cataloging, there are not yet available any standard cost data for cataloging in college and university libraries. T h e present trend toward estimating cost in units of time rather than money seems to offer a promising approach; but, meanwhile, the question has been raised as to whether some objective measure of efficiency can be found by examining the statistics which are ordinarily put into the annual reports of nearly every library. A recent textbook on college library administration carries the statement that "the size of the technical staff will depend directly upon the number of new acquisitions to be handled within a given period." While the technical staff properly includes both the order and catalog departments in a library organized along conventional lines, it is the cataloging process which has received marked attention in recent years because of its alleged disproportionate cost. Therefore, if some normal or typical ratio between the number of yearly acquisitions and the size of the cataloging staff could be determined, it would be useful as a criterion in terms of statistical data easily available to the administrator who is interested in allocating his resources, usually scarce, to the best advantage. Assuming a fair degree of uniformity in organization and in the definition of cataloging, and a certain standardization of quality of cata-