Page 63 - JOURNAL OF LIBRARY SCIENCE IN CHINA 2018 Vol. 43

XIAO Ximing / The interaction between Library Science Education and the society in China over the past century 063

leaders of the Party and the state called for “improving the scientific and cultural level of the entire
nation”. The third is the First Session of the Fifth National People’s Congress held in the meantime.
It was clearly proposed in the Report on the Work of the Government for the first time, “to develop
all types of libraries and build a library network serving scientific research and the masses”. These
three events are of landmark significance to the development of China’s educational, scientific, and
cultural undertakings during the new period.
It was under this background that the recovery and reconstruction of LSE started. Peking
University and Wuhan University started to enroll students majoring in Library Science, which
was just the prologue to the development in this given period. Afterwards, there was a craze for
setting up LSE around the country, marking the peak of LSE development. From 1978 to the entire
1980s, related departments and faculties of LSE had been established in a number of universities,
including the Branch Campus of Peking University (1978), Shanghai University (1978), East
China Normal University (1979), Anhui University (1978), Beijing Normal University (1980), Sun
Yat-sen University (1980), Lanzhou University (1980), Fujian Normal University (1981), Sichuan
University (1984), Nankai University (1984), Xiangtan University (1984), and Hebei University
(1984). In 1990, there were 55 universities and colleges that set up departments and majors in
Library Science (Ni & Zheng, 1996). So far, the previous landscape of China’s LSE had completed
changed, in which Peking University and Wuhan University played dominant role for years. Apart
from the increase of new-founded educational institutions, the enrollment of students majoring
in Library Science was expanded in an unprecedented manner. From 1978 to the early 1990s,
the 55 educational institutions mentioned above had cultivated about 30,000 undergraduates,
about 50,000 diploma students, and nearly 1,000 postgraduates. From 1980 to 1990, the students
receiving correspondence education in Peking University and Wuhan University had outnumbered
6,000. In 1985, the Open University of China enrolled 20,000 Library Science majors for the first
time (Library Society of China, 2014). Such scales and developing speed were attributed to the
library undertakings’ urgent demand for professional talents since the reform and opening-up, and
in the meanwhile, these were also determined by the trend of popularization of China’s higher
education.

4.2.2 The influence on the system of LSE
Since the reform and opening-up, China has obtained several outstanding achievements in terms of
LSE, one of which is the establishment of a multi-type and multi-level LSE system. Before 1978,
there were only two school systems of LSE in China. One was undergraduate (diploma before
1956), and the other correspondence college diploma, which was carried out on a limited scale. In
1978, along with the reestablishment and improvement of the national system of higher education,
Peking University and Wuhan University began to enroll postgraduate students majoring in Library
Science and bibliography science. In 1981, the Ministry of Education approved the foundation
of authorization stations of Master’s Degree in Library Science by Peking University and Wuhan