Page 8 - JOURNAL OF LIBRARY SCIENCE IN CHINA 2018 Vol. 43

008 Journal of Library Science in China, Vol.9, 2017

destroyed.
From the perspective of development of international Library Science, theoretic foundation of
Library Science had made significant progress since the World War II. J. H. Shera proposed Social
Epistemology in 1952 as theoretic foundation of Library Science. B. Landheer published Social
Functions of Libraries in 1957 and founded library sociology. Besides the philosophical studies,
more important progress was made in occupational concepts. As early as in the New Library
Movement, Liu Guojun, Du Dingyou, Li Xiaoyuan and so on proposed that the library should serve
everyone. The idea was not proposed earlier than in other countries, but at least it kept pace with
the international trend. Through study on the public library’s social functions in the international
library community after World War II, the connotation of occupational concepts was enriched.
In Arsenals of a Democratic Culture, S. H. Ditzion associated the public library’s functions with
welfare of the underclass for the first time and revealed the relationship between the public library
and modern democratic politics. In 1949 both of Foundation of the Public Library by J. H. Shera
and The Public Library in the Political Process by O. Garceau expounded the relationship between
the public library and political democracy. Those theoretical works made a breakthrough in pure
philosophical theoretical study represented by the Chicago School and laid the foundation for
the publication of Unesco Public Library Manifesto. In the meanwhile, studies on occupational
concepts had regressed compared with that in the New Library Movement in China. The idea of
serving everyone was criticized and no positive criticisms were put forward, let alone the topic of
the relationship between the public library and modern democratic politics. The discussion over
What’s Library Science was just repeating the topic in the 1920s, which was not able to narrow the
gap in theoretic foundation between Chinese Library Science and international Library Science.

1.2 Union catalog

Study on union catalog was a shinning point in 1957. It was partly within the scope of
bibliography. Papers published in this period did not make a breakthrough in bibliography.
However, the paper On Union Catalog introduced union catalogs in the Occident (Mao, 1957).
The foreign materials it provided was in such a detail which was rarely seen in papers published
before the Cultural Revolution. Union catalog was partly within the scope of literature resources
construction. In 1957 the State Council issued the National Books Coordinate Scheme and founded
central library committee in Beijing and Shanghai, which was the first large-scale resource sharing
in the librarianship. One of the objectives was to establish national books union catalog. Mao Kun
and Deng Yanlin focused on resource sharing. Mao Kun pointed that one of the functions of union
catalog was to “make inter-library loans more convenient”(Mao, 1957). Deng Yanlin discussed
the union catalog from the objectives of the National Books Coordinate Scheme. He held that the
meaning of union catalog lied in “making full advantage of library’s resources and potentials” and
its functions included “being convenient to inter-library loan and reproduction and increasing use