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LI Guoxin / The historical contributions of the Public Library Law of the People’s Republic of China 031

services. The cloud platform has displayed effects in extending service scope, attracting the public,
meeting demands and improving service efficiency. Services provided include online preservation
of services, online tickets buying, webcast, online positioning of facilities and online navigation
as well as changes of acquisition means and lending in order to provide more convenient and
high-quality services. The PLL directs legally the development of public libraries’ digital service
platform.
The PLL also pays special attention to the construction of the central-branch libraries and the
digital protection of ancient books. With regards to the central-branch system, the PLL prescribes
that the county governments should perfect digital services and network service and delivery
system, and also extend public libraries services to grass-root libraries through the Internet and
online resource delivery system (Article 31). With regards to the digital protection of ancient
books, the PLL prescribes that digital methods can be used to reorganize, publish and research
(Article 41).

6.3 Protection of readers’ private information in the network environment

Public libraries hold a large amount of private information. Therefore, digital services and network
operation pose challenges to information protection. For the first time the PLL prescribes clearly
the legal norms which concern the responsibilities of public libraries in the protection of readers’
private information (Article 43). Specifically, public libraries should protect three types of readers’
information: personal information such as name, gender, affiliation, address, telephone and email
address which public libraries have acquired to identify a specific reader; borrowing information
which public libraries have acquired about the resources that a specific reader has made use
of, namely borrowing record of a specific reader; other types of information that may concern
readers’ privacy which public libraries have acquired except personal information and borrowing
information. Generally speaking, privacy information refers to information irrelevant to public
or group interest, which the person is unwilling to disclose and the unwillingness is considered
reasonable. Privacy information defined in international public libraries’ services includes log-
in information, copy or download information, information about readers’ preference or work
plans acquired by analyzing lending information and library visit frequency. The PLL prescribes
that public libraries cannot provide privacy information to others by selling or by other means
illegally. “Others” includes any groups, organizations and persons except public libraries; “provide”
includes disclosure to specific and unspecific parties; “illegally” means that the parties who are
permitted by the law to access privacy information is not included. The Professional Ethic Codes
of Chinese Librarians (Trial Implementation) published by the Library Society of China in 2012
proposed that librarians should protect readers’ interests and keep their secrets, which is considered
an advance in thinking and a significant breakthrough in Chinese library community (The Library
Society of China, 2003). Upgrading personal information protection from service philosophy to