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Extended English abstracts of articles published in the Chinese edition of Journal of Library Science in China 2018 Vol.44 177

ratings is mainly based on the state public library standards and is checked by the public libraries
themselves as an important basis for its planned development and for its support from the federal
or state governments and other social organizations.
In this paper, we compare the two types of rating activities separately, and find that there
are significant differences in their evaluation subjects, evaluation purposes, evaluation content
and evaluation methods. The former is generally organized by a third party team, conducting a
horizontal comparison between libraries in the same group by ranking the mathematical operation
of quantitative indexes, and is a “competitive evaluation”. The latter is dominated by the state
library administration agencies or the library associations and such organizations, establishing
“benchmarking” for libraries at different levels, helping them to select appropriate development
goals and conduct self-inspection and evaluation accordingly, generally checking whether the
library meets a standard requirements of a certain level, and is an “up-to-standard assessment”. The
former is more easily understood and accepted by the public, and the publicity is more effective.
The latter is more conducive to the library to make targeted improvement plans based on leakages
and vacancies.
At present, the evaluation and grading of public libraries in our country have the characteristics
of both the “up-to-standard evaluation” and the “competitive evaluation” as mentioned above.
Considering that there are big differences in their purpose of evaluation, contents of evaluation,
methods of evaluation and scope of application of evaluation results, it is difficult to consider
both in the same set of evaluation tools at the same time. In the future, the two should be designed
separately according to their different characteristics. Among them, the up-to-standard evaluation
should focus on encouraging public libraries to carry out independent benchmark checks under
the guidance of industry standards, and further improve the evaluation index system, which can
increase the binding requirements on the modern management and professional management of
libraries. The consideration of the value and influence of the library resources and services in the
social life will make the content of the evaluation more systematic and complete. At the same
time, the evaluation indexes should be transformed into the “YES or NO” judgment items that
are easy to understand and answer, and the description of the evaluation results would be concise
and clear for public libraries to improve their work according to the results of the assessment.
The competitive evaluation should highlight the function of value declaration for the public and
other stakeholders, simplify the content of evaluation so as to focus on the external interests. At
the same time, we should strengthen the scientific verification of the comparability of competitive
indexes and the weighted valuation of indicators, and adopt more rigorous mathematical methods
to calculate and analyze, so as to enhance the persuasiveness of the ranking results.
Overall, we are still lacking in domestic research on the characteristics and different rules of the
“up-to-standard evaluation” and the “competitive evaluation”, while practices are mainly based on
work experience and intuition foundation. The American experiences interpreted in this paper have
provided us with a preliminary reference, but follow-up research still needs to be combined with