Page 129 - JOURNAL OF LIBRARY SCIENCE IN CHINA 2018 Vol. 44

128 Journal of Library Science in China, Vol.10, 2018

average annual growth rate of 17.41%, driving the continued development of libraries.
However, statistics indicate that the performance of county level libraries nationwide reached
a peak value and then declined slowly from the period of 2003-2004. While fiscal investment
continued to grow, library output failed to grow simultaneously. After 2009, the performance score
of the sector of county level libraries remained less than 1, with the growth rate of input higher
than that of output. Fu Caiwei and Zhang Weifeng (2017) carried out calculation and analysis of
overall efficiency, pure technical efficiency and scale efficiency of provincial-wide public libraries
by using CCR and BCC models under the category of DEA. Results show that from 2001 to 2015,
public libraries nationwide saw low comprehensive efficiency which continued to decline. The
main reason is inadequate technology and management and congested resource allocation. To be
specific, scale efficiency has remained at a higher level, but pure technical efficiency has continued
to decline. This shows that the reason for low and constantly-declining overall efficiency is not
inadequate scale of investment, but inadequate technology and management. Meanwhile, it is
also confirmed that there exists congested resource allocation in more than half of the provinces
throughout the country. Reforming the conventional library management system is more urgent
than demand for increasing public investment,which also explains the in-depth reason why the
performance of county level libraries is not sensitive to fiscal subsidy.
The result of regression analysis of the 2001-2015 data indicates that a stable positive correlation
can be hardly developed between incremental fiscal investment and performance of county level
libraries. The regression model of county level libraries nationwide shows that growth of fiscal
subsidy cannot give rise to growth of circulation person-time and no mode of stable positive
relationship has been formed between the two.

3.1.2 There are complex factors affecting the performance of county level libraries. It is various
combination modes of variables that affect the performance of public libraries under various
contexts
There exists significant disparity with respect to major factors affecting performance and their
modes of combination under different socio-economic development environments in the eastern,
central, western and northeast areas (see Table 5 and 6). Library circulation person-time (logltrc)
and number of books borrowed (logwjcc) are the two most important indicators evaluating library
performance. The authors also carried out multiple linear regression analysis of the number of
books borrowed from county level libraries and related data from 2001 to 2015. Analysis results
indicate that factors affecting the number of books borrowed mainly include the number of library
employees, fiscal subsidy, permanent resident population by the end of that very year, local GDP
and public accessibility to libraries. It is also assumed that all county level libraries are equally
accessible and other factors have negligible impact on circulation person-time of county level
libraries, comparing to the four major factors of the number of library employees, fiscal subsidy,
permanent resident population by the end of that very year, local GDP. Comparison results indicate