Page 11 - JOURNAL OF LIBRARY SCIENCE IN CHINA 2015 Vol. 41

010 Journal of Library Science in China, Vol. 7, 2015

books, but the social function was undoubtedly weak due to the lack of democracy and public
awareness in ancient China. Nonetheless, ancient bibliotheca was perfectly compatible to the
social background at that time. From the perspective of contradictory dialectical thinking, the
prosperity of modern public libraries and the recession of ancient bibliothecas are irreversible due
to the interactive forces between storage and usage. Therefore, the reason why ancient bibliothecas
could be replaced by modern libraries is that the social function of the modern library can be better
adapted to the factual demands of the present-day China, while the reason why ancient bibliothecas
could be replaced is that it had similar functions with modern library. Likewise, paper, the current
main carrier of document, took the place of bamboo slip and silk. But it is incorrect to say that
bamboo slip and silk gave birth to paper. Although they are different entities, they have the same
basic function—to be the carrier of document. Therefore, in this regard, when it comes to the
history of Chinese books, nobody can deny that the period of bamboo slip and silk was one of the
most important development phases of Chinese books. Although there probably are not evident
connections between ancient bibliotheca and modern libraries, the emergence of modern libraries
have clearly replaced the ancient bibliotheca. The “replacement” indicated that the two institutions
share common features, characteristics and functions to a large degree.
The theory of modern Library Science, authored by Y. C. Xu and Huo (1999), after defining
and describing the characteristics and relationships between archive, library and information
system, points out that the library is merely a historic term. In fact, from archives to both
libraries and information centers or information systems (digital libraries can be categorized
as a kind of information systems), the history demonstrated a consistent and continuous
development from the lowest form to the highest in a spiral fashion, which also reflects a
philosophical understanding. Everything in this world is progressively developing during various
history stages, which presents very distinctive historical characteristics as determined by social
conditions in a certain period of time. If we adopt a holistic perspective and overview of the
development of history, it is not difficult to realize that ancient bibliotheca, modern library,
and contemporary library are the same social organizations which are in a state of progressive
transformation throughout history. Therefore, it is inappropriate to evaluate ancient bibliotheca
by applying modernistic criteria, like public accessibility and social equality. These are merely
superficial values, not essential, and are inconsistent with the rule that “the library is a growing
organism” (Ranganathan, 1931).
As a consequence, the history of ancient book collection is an indispensable component of the
Chinese library history and should definitely be absorbed into relevant studies.

3 Reconsideration of the periodization of Chinese library history

China, a country with five-thousand-year civilization, has a profound history of book collection
since the existence of transcript, which contributes to the huge epic of the Chinese library since