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

by experts and scholars in China. J. G. Huang (2006) maintained that the library is an educational
institution where organization and service of documentary knowledge should be carried out. Z. Z.
Huang (1988) believed that the library is a center where documentary information can be packed
and dispatched. W. C. Wu and Dong (2002) stated that the library is a cultural and educational
institution where books can be collected, arranged, stored and used to serve certain social,
political and economic areas. Zhou (1991) considered that the library is a cultural and educational
institution to collect, manage, store and use printed materials to serve readers. Moreover, Lai
(1991) even concluded ten viable definitions of library. However, with the mobilized, digitalized
and intellectualized development of library nowadays, new understandings of “library” have been
generated. Some scholars and experts define the library as a dynamically-developing information
system based on the informative demands of clients at present. B. E. Chernik, a famous American
expert in Library Science, said that the real sense of library is “an informative collection or an
informative resource system organized for usage” (Y. C. Xu & Huo, 1999). By means of an array
of collection, organization, storage and delivery of document and information, the library has
been a social organization where knowledge can be accumulated, spread and used to realize its
multi-functions of culture, education, technology, intelligence and communication, etc (Ke, 2012).
Taking the above definitions and discussions into consideration, it can be safely concluded that
the intrinsic attribute of the library is to collect books and provide services, which means that the
library roots in knowledge and orients to service. In a word, behind those varied and changeable
phenomena, the nature of library is knowledge and service (Z. Z. Huang, 1988).
Nevertheless, the ancient bibliotheca presented some basic functions and natures of a “library”,
despite the fact that its original purpose was to store private books rather than to provide public
services. There is no denying that ancient bibliotheca, whether it was officially-owned or privately-
owned, was originally not open and accessible to the general public compared with the admission-
free modern library. This is usually regarded as the most salient reason to exculde ancient
bibliotheca from “library”. Ancient bibliotheca, with relatively limited service, was a product of
the specific social circumstances and historic conditions in ancient China. In the old days, the
academic bibliotheca and monastic ones were established for the tremendous reading demands of
scholars and monks respectively, and the feudal official bibliotheca was mainly used to serve the
royals and bureaucrats, despite a few exceptions. For example, Ma believed that Jixian College,
the famous royal bibliotheca in the Tang Dynasty, allowed ordinary scholars to access and use, and
the feudal official bibliotheca in the Song Dynasty also opened for public to some degree. In Da Yi
Cui Yan, a symbolic Confucian work in the Song Dynasty, the last page regulated that anyone who
borrowed books from Chongwen bibliotheca at Imperial Academy must ensure the books returned
were undamaged. In Shu Lin Qing Hua, D. H. Ye allocated several excerpts to describe the book-
borrowing activities at that time, which specifically studied the public access to feudal official
bibliothecas in the Song, Yuan and Ming Dynasties, particularly the three of the seven bibliothecas
where the Complete library in the four branches of literature were kept during the Qian Long