Page 84 - JOURNAL OF LIBRARY SCIENCE IN CHINA 2018 Vol. 43

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

and many lessons show that they are very likely to fail halfway. Scientific layout and centralized
management are essential to construct central and branch libraries that meet standards, and thus
it is unavoidable to encounter obstacles of the currently existing system. Therefore, building
central and branch libraries in line with the local conditions unnecessarily means that we should be
constrained by the system all the time. Also abiding by objective laws cannot be simply understood
as direct confrontation with the system. Innovation lies in how to avoid the system barriers, in
order that the concepts and designs of central and branch libraries can accord with the objective
laws as much as possible.
1) Scientific planning. The prerequisite of making the central libraries’ service generally equal to
people is that, the branch libraries should have a scientific plan and layout according to populations
and needs. If laid out by administrative divisions, it will probably waste resources (one branch
library is built in every community), and it is possible to cause blind zones in service (for example,
in the combination area of administrative divisions, both sides expect the other to build libraries),
thus conflicting with the current system. In the early stage of building main and branch libraries,
Suzhou Library has planned its layout, but it was not thoroughly implemented until the government
began leading the demonstration area. Yu Ziniu, curator of the Nanshan Library in Shenzhen,
has realized this problem at an earlier stage and proposed solutions, namely to reorganize the
84 existing community libraries that are loosely managed and reconstruct them into 30 branch
libraries directly under the supervision of the Nanshan Library, with 2 additional mobile libraries
coming into the communities, which can enhance service efficiency and save the construction costs
and operating costs of building 50 branch libraries (Z.N. Yu, 2008). Therefore, it is necessary to
plan a scientific layout of the branch spots, which plays an important role in designing the system
and is the compulsory requirement of the system.
2) Centralized management. This problem existed in the very beginning in the construction
of main and branch libraries, which can be a headache in the future. To build such libraries in a
standard manner, unifying management is one of the basic requirements. The key of this matter
lies in who is in charge of the staff of the branch libraries, since this directly relates to whether the
main libraries can implement centralized management on the branch libraries and achieve effective
command (not guidance in services). Also it decides whether the branch libraries can provide
quality and professional service as the main libraries do in accordance with the service standards.
If managed by the same body, these are not problems. However, these become big problems in the
system of dividing revenue and expenditure between the central and local governments and holding
each responsible for balancing their budgets. Even at present, the central and branch libraries in
many areas are led by the government, it is still hard to define it as a single body of construction,
thus far from being the body of centralized management in a real sense. Therefore, the formation of
centralized management within central and branch libraries needs a targeted system design, trying
to avoid system barriers. Taking the libraries affiliated to the cultural centers of towns and villages
as an example, on the premise that the sites, buildings, and property rights are unchanged, we can