Page 124 - JOURNAL OF LIBRARY SCIENCE IN CHINA 2018 Vol. 44

FU Caiwu & YUE Nan / Restrictions on incremental financial investment in the construction of 123
modern public cultural service system: Based on investigations of county public libraries

libraries was slightly better than the overall performance of public libraries nationwide.

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Figure 4. Performance of public libraries nationwide 2001-2015. 〇a ①

2 Factors affecting the performance of county level libraries: Assumption
and verification

Libraries are public cultural service institutions. Both Chinese and foreign academic communities
use library circulation person-time as the most important indicator testing the efficiency of
libraries. The authors assume five factors affecting circulation person-time, including number
of library employees, fiscal subsidy, local permanent resident population base by the end of that
very year, local GDP and accessibility to libraries. The number of employees undoubtedly is a
decisive factor determining the efficiency of any institution. Fiscal subsidy more or less may affect
library collection volume and operation guarantee capacity. Permanent resident population base
and local GDP may affect total demand of libraries and intensity of demand. Due to an enormous
number of county level libraries, their accessibility will be involved with complex factors, such
as environment, traffic and parking area and will be therefore difficult to measure. Moreover, as
a county/district usually has a smaller territorial area, county level libraries are roughly located
within a “half-hour circle of public cultural service”. In comparing regional performance of the
eastern, central, western and northeast areas, the authors assume that all county level libraries are
roughly accessible at the same level. The following analysis therefore will not take into account the
accessibility of public level libraries. Meanwhile, the authors assume that other factors have minor
impact on circulation person-time of county level libraries and therefore can be ignored comparing

① Note: In order to discuss the relationship between county level libraries and public libraries nationwide, the authors compared
general data about the two. Input, output and performance results of public libraries nationwide and county level libraries are
comparable because both their data standardization bases from 2001 to 2015 use indicator data of county level libraries of the eastern
area in 2015 and because they use the same method to calculate their input, output and performance. The performance contribution
rate of county level libraries used in this thesis refers to the ratio between performance value of county level libraries and that of
public libraries nationwide. It is understood as the status of county level libraries in the country’s public library sector. The larger the
ratio is, the great impact county level libraries have on public libraries nationwide and the higher status they have; and vice versa.