Page 70 - JOURNAL OF LIBRARY SCIENCE IN CHINA 2015 Vol. 41

Jianxin GU, Fang TIAN & Lei SHI / Research on Hong Fanwu’s remarkable contribution to the modern library cause of China 069

this book in the General theory of Library Science, “it is the first work that concludes the working
and teaching experience. It is the foundation of applied Library Science and practical theories of
Library Science”. Fan (2004) had a specific evaluation of this book. He thought that the publication
of the book was a real landmark in Library Science indigenization and represented the highest
level of library management research in China at that time.
In December 1956, Hong Fanwu gave a report dealing with the problems of the dispersion usage
and centralized management of books in the first national work conference of academic libraries.
He thought that the book resources of a university library were complex, which included the
subscription by libraries, schools or certain teachers, or the donation or exchange from the outside.
It was difficult for a library to account the accurate number of collections. Therefore, books should
be managed intensively by the library, and the library under the guidance of unified planning,
should establish a good circulation and reading system. Centralized management and dispersion
usage were both necessary. In order to achieve the dispersion usage, a library should set branch
libraries and department reading rooms. Under the centralized management, books were distributed
to various spots to play their roles, designedly and systematically. This idea had great influences at
that time, and a great number of libraries have adopted this way of management till now.

1.2 Hong Yu-feng library classification

As for the library classification, Hong Fanwu thought that “the meaning of classification is to
distinguish the nature of books and put the similar ones together. The library classification is
beneficial for both readers and librarians. Isn’t it enough to copy the ready-made methods”.
Therefore, he made a positive reform in the classification of Chinese books. His classification
put away the extreme ideas, which meant abandoning the traditional classification without
increasing categories extensively, expanding the four-branch or five-branch classification
into more than ten or twenty branches. However, there was a gap between ideal and reality
(Y. F. Hong, 1926). In 1926, he published an essay in Library Science Quarterly to introduce
Expansive Classification (EC). In addition, he compared EC with Decimal Classification (DC)
and thought that EC was clear and logical but having no detailed index, while DC using numbers
to indicate classifications was not only clear bur also specific, which was the most popular
classification in America. What’s important, the classification (EC) was more suitable for the
library with no more than two hundred and fifty thousand books, which meant it best befitted
China’s modern libraries.
With the aim of inheriting the advantages of Chinese traditional classification, such as
reserving “Jing” branch to accommodate a number of ancient books, and absorbing the
advantages of western classification that was simple, general and flexible, Hong divided the
new and old books into nine classes, Series (000), Confucian Classics (100) and History and