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

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

China to provide freely accessible services.
However, free access does not guarantee equal assistance to everyone. Those with difficulty
or lack of interests in reading should not be treated as average readers, because the gap in their
knowledge or information literacy is so significant that, without any interference to their reading
behavior, they could never make a difference through reading (Fan, 2014). For those readers,
public libraries should offer more than common services, more than just passively waiting for their
request of reading assistance, but a full range of reading promotion programs to guide, train and
help them to cultivate reading interests and enhance reading ability (Fan, 2013). Such promotion is
generally done in the form of interesting reading events, through which readers are guided to feel
the charm and joy of reading and develop their reading ability and willingness.
Public libraries in the United States and other developed counties, in addition to providing
regular reading events, also organize regional reading promotion activities in joint efforts with
social institutions, with a view to raising reading atmosphere and helping the general public
improve their reading ability. For example, the “One City, One Book” program (Cole, 2015),
intended to increase public reading interests by encouraging local citizens to read and discuss
the same book at the same time and advocated by the American Library Association, has spread
to all over the United States and to cities in Canada, the United Kingdom, France, Australia, the
Netherlands, South Korea, Singapore and elsewhere around the world (S. H. Wu, 2012). Another
example is “The Big Read” program launched by the National Arts and Humanities Foundation
in the US, which gives grants to community reading activities to inspire the public enthusiasm for
pure literature books (Z. K. Yang, 2007). The form of activities may vary, such as author reading
clubs, book reading seminars, art exhibitions, lectures, movie shows, music or dance parties,
theatrical plays, round-table discussion and more (“Application process”, 2015). To ensure the
smooth implementation of “The Big Read” program in all communities, the Foundation requires
that if the organizing host is not a library, it should work with the local public library and make
sure that the scope of reading activities can cover each member of the local community and
special activities are designed to attract different groups of readers, particularly young readers at
the age of 18-24 who have little interest in reading (Hu, 2013). During the past decade, “The Big
Read” program has funded over 1 100 community reading activities and produced a far-reaching
influence nationwide (“About the Big Read”, 2015).
In Chinese counties, mostly in rural areas, there are a large number of left-behind women,
children and elders who have very limited interests and low ability in reading due to various
reasons, hence a typical group with difficulty in reading. Given the fact that existing facilities and
personnel of rural areas are insufficient to meet the needs of promoting reading to local people,
county libraries should, by leveraging the central-branch library system on the basis of free access,
actively develop joint reading activities around the county, create reading atmosphere and deliver
reading services.
In the Wujiang District of Suzhou, Jiangsu Province, the Wujiang Library (central library) has