Page 31 - JOURNAL OF LIBRARY SCIENCE IN CHINA 2018 Vol. 44

030
030 Journal of Library Science in China, Vol.10, 2018

The PLL also prescribes national responsibilities regarding the digital and network construction
(Article 40). National responsibilities should be shouldered by governments of all levels. Firstly,
a unified, interconnected digital service network should be constructed. Nowadays, public
libraries must be equipped with digital service network which should be interconnected with
other public libraries instead of being isolated. The prerequisite of interconnection is unified
standards. Therefore, it is the government’s responsibility to formulate standards facilitating data
exchange and interoperability among different systems. Secondly, the development of digital
reading products and the research on digital resource conservation should be supported. Digital
reading products include resources in digital form and other carriers which can be read in digital
form. The 14th China’s National Reading Survey Report indicates that the adult’s comprehensive
reading rate is 79.9%, in which digital reading rate is 68.2% and has been keeping growing(The
14th China’s national reading survey report issued, 2017). Digital reading has become the primary
means of daily reading. Accordingly, more digital resources and convenient digital reading carriers
should be developed to meet the variant demands. Digital resource conservation has become a
new issue with the changes in resource carriers in public libraries. In recent years, digital resources
collected and provided in public libraries in China have increased rapidly. In 2015 the acquisition
expenses of new digital resources in public libraries increased by 84.17% over the previous year;
the acquisition expenses of new digital resources in the proportion of new collections increased
by 58.98% over the previous year (Research Institute, National Library of China, 2016). In 2016
those two indicators increased 16.66% and 6.43% respectively on the basis of the previous year
(Research Institute, National Library of China, 2017). Natural disasters, legal disputes, systematic
malfunction, carrier updating, financial crisis and the constraint from purchase contracts pose
challenges for the conservation and sustainable use of digital resources. In the information age, the
conservation of digital resources concerns the inheritance of national memory and cultural safety.
Accordingly, it is the obligatory responsibility of the government to research on conservation
technology of digital resources and to construct conservation systems in public libraries. Thirdly,
the government should promote public libraries to take advantage of digital and network
technologies to provide services by means such as policies, guarantee and evaluation.

6.2 Responsibilities of public libraries

As regards to public libraries’ responsibilities in digital and network construction, the PLL
prescribes that the construction of digital resources should be strengthened since digital resources
are the precondition for digital services. Corresponding facilities should be equipped which is
the bedrock of digital services. Guarantee from governments of all levels should involve digital
service equipment. The PLL also prescribes that an information sharing platform both online and
offline should be established. In recent years, the construction of public digital cultural service
platform has made innovations by establishing cloud platform supporting online and offline