Page 108 - JOURNAL OF LIBRARY SCIENCE IN CHINA 2018 Vol. 44

FENG Jia & WANG Shanshan / The corporate governance pilots of public libraries in China 107

violation of the withdrawal laws and regulations, taking advantage of official position for
seeking privileges or profit, disclosure of the private and confidential information, concealing
the important information willfully, correcting the known wrong decision without in time,
shirking, delaying or refusing the responsibility of necessary decisions, poor decision by
rebelling against laws, regulations and “library charter”, and faults resulted from collective
agreement. The treatment for these above situations depends on the influence degree of the poor
decision.

3.3 Setting up the “Librarianship Foundation”, guaranteeing the smooth flow of funds

In the context of the growing diversity and multi-level social and cultural needs, the government
investment to the field of public culture doesn’t mean arranging all the citizens’ public cultural
welfare, and it is just the most basic protection for the basic public cultural service needs to
the whole society. Therefore, the effective governance of public libraries should seek a balance
between the basic protection from the government and the reasonable demands of the public,
and make the social capital become the beneficial supplement for the government investment
and social benefits. The pilots of corporate governance structure have explored the long-
term operation mode of expanding the channel for capital raising and using by setting up the
foundation, such as Fengnan District Library in Tangshan City, Shuozhou Library, Wenzhou
Library and so on.
1) Setting up and operating the foundation
“Librarianship Foundation” should be initiated by the local public library board of trustees,
and the objective of the foundation should be to make full use of the social capital to flourish and
develop the librarianship based on the premise of the government capital injection. The board of
trustees operates and manages the foundation, including formulating the specific mission, vision
and strategic direction, formulating the foundation charter, deliberating the use of funds, selecting
and recalling the president of the foundation, determining various sponsoring events from the
foundation. Meanwhile, the public library board of trustees should strive for the support of the
foundation from government, actively strive for the deduction policy before taxation, formulate
the public relations strategy, and maximize the social capital investment in order to improve the
social credibility and the social awareness of the foundation, create the good social image of being
efficient, honest and responsible, open and transparent.
During the process of the operation, all the capital both from public libraries and the board
of trustees should be put into the revenue account, managed as a whole, and spent on the
development and service of library construction instead of for other purposes. This would prevent
the government from casting off its responsibility for public libraries with the excuse of setting up
the foundation and supervision from the board of trustees. The supervision of the fund flows by the
whole society should also be strengthened.