AZ ORSZÁGOS SZÉCHÉNYI KÖNYVTÁR ÉVKÖNYVE 1965-1966. Budapest (1967)

III. A könyvtári munka elmélete és gyakorlata - Farkas László: Szolgálati felelősség a könyvtárban - Responsibility of service in the library

Responsibility of service in the library L. FARKAS Four types of the responsibility of service may be distinguished

: criminal, disciplinary, material responsibility, and the moral responsibility in connection with the violation of the unwritten rules of the attitude to work. This latter type is, however, not of legal but purely of ethical character. The criminal law punishes those actions dangerous to the society and liable to severe moral judgement which imperil or violate the state, social or economic order, the person or rights of the citizens. The rules concerning the criminal responsibility are included in the Criminal Penal Code. The disciplinary offence against the statutes of labour contained in the Labour Code is, on the other hand, such an antisocial action which entails the lighter disapproval of the society and which disturbes the working process first of all in a given community — enterprise, institution, library — or it endangers the smoothness of the process. The cases of the disciplinary responsibility may be distinguished from the material responsibility regulated similarly in the Labour Code by the fact that in the latter case the worker causes material loss to the community by his or her illegal attitude. The sanction applied aims not only at the sentencing of the worker and at the prevention of similar cases but also at the indemnity of the damage caused. The criminal responsibility turns of service character if the crime imperiling directly the social and service interest is committed by the worker in service activity. E. g. if a librarian steals or, damages a precious piece of the library holdings, further if by dereliction and contravening his supervisory and controlling duty he causes damages in the holdings of the library: the supervisor leaves without control the reading room for a long time and by this negligence he renders possible the damage of the precious library material used therein. An important characteristic of the regulations in the Labour Code concerning disciplinary responsibility is that the disciplinary offences are not determined one by one but their concept is contained in a skeleton regulation. Disciplinary offence is every action of the worker by which he violates his duties in connection with his work. In the course of the disciplinary procedure the employer has to prove the offence. The disciplinary procedure is not essential if the offence is of minor importance. From the librarians' point of view the rules concerning the protection of the library's holdings and the use of the material are of utmost importance. The careless keeping of the records of the stock, the violence of the regulations concerning book hygiene, and fire protection, non observance of the regular stock revision, dereliction of the control in the Reading Room, violence of the loan regulations are all such actions which severely imperil the scientific and public interest as well as the social property, consequently they may serve as a basis to a disciplinary procedure against a guilty librarian. According to the statutes of labour in force the responsibility of the librarians for damages in the library's holdings should be judged on basis of the regulations of the Labour Code dealing with the responsibility of the workers for damages caused by violence of their duties. The worker of a library is responsible materially for damages in the holdings only if the damage or shortage has been caused by his illegal and guilty attitude. The worker is responsible for the total loss if the damage was caused voluntarily. In general the worker is responsible for the carelessly caused damage up to 15% of his monthly wage; he is responsible up to 50% of his avarage wage if the damage is the result of the severe violence of the regulations. The worker in leading post is responsible up to his six months avarage wage if the damage has been caused by negligence of control or by negligence of the responsibility for indemnity. If the damage is the result of the worker's carelessness, the responsibility for indemnity attains one year's avarage wage of the worker. The guiltiness of the worker — be it either voluntary or careless action — must be proved by the employer. The breaking of the unwritten rules of the attitude to work may take different shapes in the frame of the labour relations, since the workers are responsible for many facts not regulated legally. From the point of view of the work of the community it is of utmost importance, how these legally not regulated but morally valid duties prevail in the work of the leaders and subordinates. The results and smoothness of the community's work greatly depend on this. It is, therefore, justified to include the moral responsibility — beside the legal forms of the responsibility — among the categories of the responsibility of service. 314