Page 61 - JOURNAL OF LIBRARY SCIENCE IN CHINA 2015 Vol. 41

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

including the operation of the library right. There are two main aspects in the library rights system.
First of all, libraries offer users the same opportunities and conditions for using. This will
inevitably lead to conflicts as follows. First，different users may have contradictions and conflicts
in resource utilization because they have similar resource requirements. This situation may strain
resources and affect the efficiency of demand. For instance, the condition of limited seat resources
in the library gives rise to the situation that the students occupy seats for their postgraduate
entrance exams and final exams, which causes conflicts. Second, library opens equally to everyone
for free and offers the equal opportunities to use library resources freely. However, different users
may have different qualifications and abilities, different education backgrounds, and different
social conditions. These differences can directly influence their probability of using the library.
For the groups that have not received education or have low level of education, the equal usage
and free access to libraries perform practically no function. Or it can be said that there is a certain
degree of inequality in this equal opportunity, because it ignores the individual differences in
qualifications, abilities and social conditions. Yet it is also true that the free access to library
resources is an important prerequisite for the development of our society and is also indispensable.
Without the premise, the social fairness would be compromised.
Then, libraries focus on the vulnerable groups and the constructions of libraries in poor areas.
Actually, this particular concern intends to classify the service objects and admits the differences
in qualifications, abilities and social conditions among them. According to the principles of
social justice, libraries should offer different services to different objects. For instance, as to the
vulnerable groups, libraries should offer special services to them according to their distinctive
situations, and meet their special demands for using library resources based on the purpose of
social justice. It is justified for the library to have this “discrimination” because this kind of
“discrimination” is based on the objective differences in intellectual and physical aspects, which is
different from the discrimination that is based on the differences in race, gender and identity. This
kind of “discrimination” is allowed by the constitutional law, i.e., this kind of “discrimination” is
a kind of equality in substance and coincides with the requirement of justice. As the redistribution
of social resources, this kind of resource distribution is in the interest of the vulnerable group in
society and is a kind of justifiable allocation strategy. “To acknowledge the differences in pursuing
social justice is the new approach to pursue justice.” (Sun, 2011). Meanwhile, focusing on the
vulnerable groups and the construction of libraries in poor areas is a kind of redistribution of
library resources and educational resources, which facilitates the resource flow from the resource-
saturated developed areas to the resource-poor lagging areas. This kind of redistribution policy is
established on the foundation of the appropriate intervention and control of the subjective right
in developed areas from the nation, and this kind of intervention needs the operation of the state
machinery. However, any intervention of nation civic rights is at the cost of reducing the freedom
and right of people. But this kind of “appropriate imposition” itself is the rational mediation and
balance in the difference of social development and it reflects the justness. Furthermore, libraries