Page 97 - JOURNAL OF LIBRARY SCIENCE IN CHINA 2018 Vol. 44

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

implementing the central requirements and promoting cultural reform on the original basis. These
pilots have inspired great enthusiasm of public libraries and boosted more explorations of the
corporate governance for much more public libraries (Department of public culture of the Ministry
of Culture, 2016).

2 The prominent problems in the public library corporate governance pilot
work

With the central government’s active promotion and high attention, the pilots have made lots of
progress and some inherent problems, such as the full implementation of the independent legal
status for public libraries, the board of trustees decision excluding the administrative intervention,
the sound input mechanism and supporting policies, etc., have been improved. However, restricted
by traditional ideas and pre-existing mechanisms, the board of trustees system of public libraries is
still confronted with some prominent problems, which means that further work should be done to
make the system widly accepted.

2.1 Different degrees of concern and unbalanced regional development

Currently, the central government has adopted one of the common ways of implementing policies,
first pilot and then gradually introducing it across the nation, is the way to deepen reform that
should be followed. The construction and development of the corporate governance of public
libraries should adopt the method, which will help the reform in individual areas and link them up
over time to cover the whole region. However, the phenomenon of different degrees of concern
toward the pilots is common, even in the pilot areas awarded by the central and the provincial
government. Some local governments didn’t treat the pilot as the important content of the cultural
management system reform, and some local governments didn’t provide necessary conditions
and the corresponding financial support to the institutions which would like to make reform. Four
of the seven national pilots are located in the eastern areas of China, and account for more than
half of the total, because the local governments paid more attention, the local overall economic
development level was higher, and public libraries were generally in better conditions. It also
indicates the unbalanced regional development.

2.2 Limited breakthrough innovations and vague feature

The key of current pilots is to make breakthrough in the pre-existing personnel and financial
system and implement the legal autonomy of the public libraries. However, the “physiological
rejection” between the pre-existing mechanisms and innovation system of the corporate
governance is obvious, and the true sense of corporate governance needs a transitional period.