Page 49 - JOURNAL OF LIBRARY SCIENCE IN CHINA 2018 Vol. 43

LI Guoxin & ZHANG Yong / On accelerating the renaissance of public libraries in Central China 049

offline services is an important form of public library reading activities in the future, which puts
forward a new task for the construction of digital resources and also provides a new source of
resources construction.

2.5 To improve the guiding function of evaluation standards

The evaluation standards play the directional role in the work progress. At present, with regard to
the evaluation of public libraries in China, there are grading standards at the national level and a
variety of local evaluation-standards in light of local conditions. In accordance with the objectives
of revitalizing public librarianship in Central China, the evaluation standards need to be improved
in two aspects. Firstly, the performance-oriented incentive mechanism should be set up. We
should get rid of the evaluation emphasis on the input such as financial allocation, total reserves of
resources, building area, and the number of staff. The core indicators of public library development
should embody service efficiency, such as the target population coverage rate, circulation rate,
visiting rate, click rate and activity participation rate, leading public libraries to develop with
focus on efficiency. Secondly, the evaluation index system of levels, regions and the whole
system should be established. Specifically, on the basis of the traditional level evaluation system
(according to provinces, cities and counties), the regional level (according to the East, the Central
and the West) should be established learning from the standards of the National Public Cultural
Service Demonstration Areas. At the same time, in order to adjust to the rapid development of
public libraries’ central-branch library system, the evaluation system should be based on the
service system instead of a single library.

2.6 To seize the historical opportunity of promoting the construction of public cultural
service system in underprivileged areas

It is the primary task of the 13th Five-Year Plan to build a well-off society. At the end of 2015,
the seven ministries jointly issued the Plan for Public Cultural Service System Construction in
Underprivileged Areas during 13th Five-Year Plan Period (hereinafter referred to as Plan). The
Plan deploys the public cultural service system in underprivileged areas to adapt to the well-off
society. It puts forward the objectives that the main indicators of basic public cultural services
in underprivileged areas should approach the average national level and reverse the trend of
widening gap by 2020. The Plan also clarifies the guiding ideology, basic principles, key tasks and
supporting measures, and plans a series of projects to promote the development of public cultural
services. The central and provincial finance will subsidize the basic public cultural service projects
in underprivileged areas through transferring payment and awards will be based on performance
appraisal. There are 261 nationally-supported underprivileged counties in Central China (Jin,
2016), which accounts for 31.4% of 832 China’s underprivileged counties. The 13th Five-Year