Page 63 - JOURNAL OF LIBRARY SCIENCE IN CHINA 2015 Vol. 41

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

system must be a unity of freedom and equality. The library freedom is freedom with equality
constraint, and the library equality is equality based on freedom (J. S. Wang, 2007). The
relationship, in which the intellectual freedom and the library equality constrain and balance
mutually, gives more rich connotation and realistic significance to freedom and equality. How to
position the status and the proportions of the freedom and equality in the library rights system is
directly related to the social position of the library itself. Although there are few problems for the
library serving as an institutional justice in theory, it may become more complex in practice. There
is a kind of dependency in libraries. This dependency manifests in two aspects: for one thing,
libraries must rely on the financial support from the government; for another, library services must
focus on the task of social development and the demands of the era, and can not be decided freely.
The library must represent the interests and requirements of users, and take this as a foothold to
request the state to take active actions (equality) or to take negative actions (freedom), to make
the policies and system of the state more advantageous in realizing the users’ right. What calls for
special attention is that the library remains representing the interests of users throughout the whole
process instead of representing itself to request from the state power.
As a justified institutional arrangement, the library itself has a mission to guarantee and
realize the users’ rights of using the library without any restraint; meanwhile the library needs to
make efforts for the realization of library equal rights. I believe that the main task of the library
development is not always proposing for the “freedom” from avoiding the national public power
intervention but for representing the interests of the users to ask for the positive intervention
and regulation from the nation, for providing more conditions and possibilities for users to use
libraries, for redistributing library and educational resources in a reasonable manner in order
to protect vulnerable groups by improving education conditions, and finally for promoting the
realization of social fairness and justice. In the long run, the efforts made by libraries are going to
drive the equality of social subject by realizing the equality of educational resources. In the case
of inequalities in physical strength and intelligence of subject, individuals’ development and target
cannot be truly realized by equal possession of social resources, and the equality of opportunity
cannot be realized either. Only by improving the subject’s “feasible capability” (Sen, 2002)
fundamentally and by realizing the equality of subject’s ability, the society’s full development will
be truly advanced. I also believe that the building of the library rights system at the present stage
should balance freedom and also focus on the realization of equal rights at the same time. The
reasons are as follows.
First of all, different ages have different developmental goals. At present, China is in the fast
pace of economic development, and the gap of social income is too large because of the free
competition; this can become a new starting point of inequality and affect the new competition and
development. The economic income in poor areas in China and the average education level are
both at a low standard. This imbalance in economy and education influences each other and affects
the development of the society fundamentally. Also the scarcity of educational resources in poor