Page 71 - JOURNAL OF LIBRARY SCIENCE IN CHINA 2015 Vol. 41

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

Geography (200), Philosophy and Religion (300), Literature (400), Social Science (500),
Natural Science (600), Applied Science (700) and Art (800), which was described in his book
Mengfang Library bibliography complied in 1924 and Hong Yu-feng library classification,
which was published in 1926. With similarities to the class of general work of DC, the class
of series includes Library Science, bibliography, reference books, series books, newspapers
and journals. And the class of Confucian classics was similar to the four-branch classification,
with the exception of compiling music into art class. The class of History and Geography were
classified by nationality and dynasty, and Chinese History (220) and Chinese Geography (250)
were especially set up to accommodate the great number of ancient books and to enlarge the
proportion of Chinese books in DC. Religion and Philosophy were combined together due to
their close relations. The first five partition of this classification born out of the traditional four-
branch classification but with great changes, while the later four partitions derived from DC
with some changes for some of its sub-classes was unsuitable for Chinese books. After these
modifications the whole classification was suitable for both old and new Chinese books.
From 1928 to 1931, Hong Fanwu firstly became the chief librarian of Tsinghua University
Library and found that Chinese books especially the ancient books had increased greatly. In order
to increase efficiency of verification (Y. F. Hong, 1931), he encouraged Shi Tinyong to reform
the Chinese and Japanese classification system, thus compiling bibliography in accordance
with the eight classes, “a (General), b (Philosophy of Religion), c (Natural Science), d (Applied
Science), e (Social Science), f (History and Geography), g (Language and Literature), h (Arts)”
and eight thousand sub-classes. Eight-branch classification combined Series (000) and Confucian
Classics (100) into a (General), which was a further mixture on the basis of Hong Yu-feng Library
Classification, and a great reform in the indigenization of Decimal Classification (DC).

1.3 Promoting the exchange of literature, advocating circuit circulation and interlibrary
loan

In 1923, Hong Fanwu published an essay Southeast University Library summary in the magazine
New Education 6 (1). He put forward that it was necessary to set traveling library, which meant
giving a number of books to an association, in accordance with actual requirement, rotating on
schedule and supporting education. He planned to advocate these ideas from universities to various
associations. In addition, he also mentioned setting up “Promotion Department” to strengthen
the communication and cooperation among the university libraries, making full use of library
collections which were treasured by each library. He thought that it was impossible for a library to
collect all books. Therefore, he planned to contact with other libraries for interlibrary loan (Y. F.
Hong, 1926). However, due to various reasons including economy and politics during the Republic
of China period, the system of interlibrary loan was restricted to a certain territorial scope and not