Page 32 - JOURNAL OF LIBRARY SCIENCE IN CHINA 2015 Vol. 41

A study on construction and accomplishment for the county
level central-branch library system in China 1①

Wugang JIN 2 ∗

Department of Information Science, East China Normal University, Shanghai 200241, China

Abstract
The county-level central-branch library system plays a major catalyzing role in balancing the urban and
rural development of library services in China. Based on existing practices and experience, counties
should be considered as units suitable in terms of administrative division, administrative jurisdiction
and financial management for establishing the county level central-branch library system. To enable
the establishment and full development of the system, a series of measures are suggested in this study.
1) Facility construction: making coordinated and overall use of all kinds of public facilities and other
infrastructure in urban and rural areas; 2) resource guarantee: making coordinated and overall use of
library procurement funds at the county level through the full circulation of books and services and the
integration of all available resources within the system; 3) service delivery: promoting library services
by urban-rural integrated provision of freely accessible events; 4) operational management: making clear
division of responsibilities in operation between central and branch libraries. In addition, it is necessary
to get support and assistance from provincial-and municipality-level libraries as well as county-level
culture centers. Meanwhile, the county-level libraries should strengthen their service capacity building,
improve the professional training system for their primary-level employees and attract specialized social
organizations to participate in their operation and management.

Keywords
County libraries, Central-branch library system, Public reading service system, Rural culture
development

It is the responsibility of the local and central governments to build public libraries (IFLA, 1994).
Under the hierarchical administrative system and partly decentralized fiscal system (figuratively
described as “eating from separate stoves”), public libraries in China have been developing in a
pattern characterized by “one level of government being responsible for establishing and managing
one library”. Public libraries at different administrative levels usually run in their own way with no
interaction with one another (G. X. Li, 2008). Besides, there is a disparity between urban and rural
areas in the allocation of public resources as a result of some unfair institutional arrangements.
During the process of industrialization, the surpluses and accumulations are collected from the
rural areas while urban areas are favored in the allocation of public resources. The “price scissors”
have thus occurred (Liu, 2008, pp.47-60).

① This paper is an outcome of the project “A study on the development of public reading service system in the rural areas of
China” (No. 14BTQ015) supported by the National Social Science Foundation of China.
* Correspondence should be addressed to Wugang JIN, Email: wgjin@infor.ecnu.edu.cn, ORCID: 0000-0001-8922-1835