Page 47 - Journal of Library Science in China, Vol.45, 2019

046 Journal of Library Science in China, Vol.11, 2019

higher requirements for the library. The library needs to address how to undertake corresponding
culture, education, science, and community functions, to shift from auxiliary to dominant
and from edge to center, and also to prove their own value. Especially in the period of social
transition, the library needs to transform to realize its social value. A society in transition needs
a library in transition. Libraries are no longer carefree. They should not only actively promote
their own transformation, but also devote themselves to promoting social transformation; not
only serve the society, but also influence it. IFLA (2013b) put forward three pillars of social,
professional, the membership concepts in 2003, and published the Statement on Libraries and
Development, which also proved that social needs and social values were the first issues that
libraries must take into account.
From the perspective of industry competition, since libraries have three major competitors,
namely the Internet, other information service providers and other social sectors, the competition
for resources, users, services and social status is fully launched (Ke, 2006a), which forces libraries
to change and transform. Library faces more challenges and competition, intensifying the resource
and service market competition. Libraries are at risk of being partially or wholly replaced, and
therefore transformation become inevitable. In the process of library transformation, on the one
hand, the library should seek for new breakthrough points through innovation, and strengthen
its core competitiveness. On the other hand, the library must attach importance to stakeholders,
solve outstanding contradictions and problems jointly with competitors, and strengthen social
cooperation, such as integrating institutions in communication, publishing and culture to form a
pattern of sharing knowledge services.
From the perspective of user demands, they make the library realize its important social value
by serving users, and satisfy users’ information and knowledge needs of wider and higher quality
by constantly enriching library services. User demands are no longer limited to reading and
documents. Instead, new demands emerge as a result of new problems in social development.
The 2018 State of America’s Libraries (ALA, 2018a) proposed three major trends in the future
development of libraries: adapting to the aging society; providing health information and leisure
space for elderly readers; providing knowledge services to narrow the income gap. This requires
that libraries in the transition period serve elderly readers, help low-income people to master
necessary skills, transform the lives of individuals, and transform communities. In the post-
knowledge service era, high-tension work pressure accompanies manpower and time liberated by
the intelligence. The new problem of leisure society is that people put forward higher requirements
on leisure activities. Libraries can pay attention to people’s pressure and ways to release pressure.
Future libraries can alleviate worries about rapid development of science and technology, and help
users break away from routine and pressure.
Social demands, industrial competition and user demands have an impact on the transformation
of library in the post-knowledge service era. These external driving forces are of great significance,
even stronger than external technical driving force. If technology is an important driving force,