Page 19 - JOURNAL OF LIBRARY SCIENCE IN CHINA 2018 Vol. 42

018 Journal of Library Science in China, Vol. 8, 2016

China Daily pointed out that libraries’ reform and transformation are imperative (People’s Daily,
2010). State of America’s Libraries Report 2014 stated that libraries continue to transform to meet
society’s changing needs (ALA, 2014). An investigation indicated that Chinese researches on
library transformation began to increase intensively from 2011 (Zhang, 2015). But the direction
of library transformation is not yet clear (Yang, 2010). Robert C. Darnton, Harvard University
Library Director, said that we are at a turning point in the history of the library, but we still do not
exactly know where we go (Wang, 2014). The topic, transformation, is paid great attention to, and
the orientation of transformation needs be further explored.
The main task in China’s 13th Five-Year period, 2016-2020, is “building a comprehensive
well-off society”. All the reform tasks and institutional building should be focused on this
objective (Xinhua Daily Telegraph, 2015). As non-profit organizations are open to the public,
public libraries should adjust the development model according to the national goal of building
a comprehensive well-off society, and the transformation will be a new normal. However, in the
view of practical of transformation, some of the transformations are successful, such as Library
City mode, Central Library mode; some are uncertain, such as cooperation mode between
library and information center. There are also failures in worldwide transformation, for example,
Harvard University Libraries’ first re-transformation, which even triggered Occupy Harvard
(Occupy Harvard).
The society development and library transformation were caught attention in library science
field, and many valuable research literatures have been published. These studies, focusing on
adjustment of internal structures of libraries and analyzing construction demands of moderately
prosperous society actively, pay attention to the following: 1) libraries’ role is positioned as
cultural heritage and cultural education, and libraries’ services for moderately prosperous society
are positioned as cultural services; 2) it emphasizes on libraries’ role of providing information
resources; 3) paying attention to libraries’ role in document collection and preservation. However,
from the perspective of the general objective of prosperous society in all respects, the researchers
in the previous exploration focused on adjustment of internal structures of libraries, and ignored
such influence of external factors as new demands for library development due to demographic
changes; focused on libraries’ cultural elements, ignored libraries’ facilitation on economy and
society development, such as the function of supporting innovation; focused on libraries function
of providing resources, but ignored their functions of supporting cities and communities; focused
on libraries’ internal management reform, ignored system exploration on library transformation,
such as absorbing social capital into libraries’ incentive system.
Only when libraries are in accordance with the general goal of society development, can
libraries then determine their direction for proper development, integrate themselves into the
mainstream of social and economic development of the country, and be come part of the national
strategic planning. Therefore, the exploration of libraries transformation is of practical significance
and urgency. In this paper, the authors believed that it is the mainstream orientation of library