Page 29 - JOURNAL OF LIBRARY SCIENCE IN CHINA 2018 Vol. 42

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

leads to the uneven development of regional cultural undertakings, and some of them could not
ensure basic services. Taking the Zhejiang Province with developed economy as an example, in
2014, there were 157 community libraries in Hangzhou. The average weekly opening time was
only 21 hours; the average funds for purchasing books was only 5,000 Yuan, 30% of which was
less than 1,000 Yuan. A random survey for several community libraries indicated that, the total
collection of books was only 5,800, and average collection per community is less than 2,000.
(Jin, 2014). Statistics in 2012 showed that the Nan’ao County Library in East Guangdong has not
bought a new book over the past 20 years (Ke, 2014). Even though some libraries innovate their
service models, they still have not been recognized. Library management model innovation is still
in the experiment. The Library Council and other governance models are still in the test. Some
have achieved good results, but the overall development is not mature.
Besides, library services are difficult to meet new demands of the users. With the application
and popularization of the intelligent network, social computing and big data technology, library
services need to be deepened. But in fact, many libraries still can only provide “Encyclopedia”
advisory services, and mobile digital services are not widespread. The library needs to highlight
the characteristics which are different from network information services. The development of
libraries’ new operation types requires new governance models, otherwise the operation type
innovation will be inhibited.

3.5 Human resources and technology

The quality and ability of professional team have become an important factor for library
development. Scholars believe that 75% of the role played by the library services is decided by
the quality of librarians (Sun, 2002). Many libraries lack qualified administrative staff. Since
libraries are public welfare institutions with full funding, the personnel arrangements of some
libraries cannot meet the cultural needs of the masses (Ren, 2010). According to a survey, library
and information professional positions are relatively limited to departments with low recruitment
rate, such as the department of aquisition and cataloguing, special collection and ancient books, so
the work area is more and more narrow; professionals of other disciplines enter largely. In terms of
administrative management, related positions are more inclined to recruit candidates of language
and journalism disciplines (Huang & Yao, 2013). Government and large enterprises are easy to hire
talent in the employment market, but libraries meet talent gap, it is difficult for libraries to employ
such professionals as data management experts, visualization technology experts, digital copyright
management experts, metadata management experts, ancient books repairing experts, social media
experts, social calculation experts, subject librarian positions, etc, which is the same at abroad.
Meanwhile, the compound talent gap is big; it is difficult to cope with the challenges brought by
new technologies, the “Internet Plus”, big data environment. Specifically, with the establishment