Page 7 - Journal of Library Science in China, Vol.45, 2019

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

and economic environment poses great challenges to the survival and development of libraries,
and creates more possibilities for the future development of librarianship as well.
The theme of this Symposium is “Libraries: Keeping Pace with the Times”. It is my great
pleasure to take this opportunity to share with you the history, current status and future planning of
Chinese librarianship in terms of its innovative development in the changing of times.

1 Chinese librarianship in the past: A development path with distinctive
Chinese characteristics

China boasts an ancient civilization of 5,000 years and profound cultural heritage. The Chinese
nation has the tradition of recording history with characters since ancient times. A tremendous
number of historical and cultural classics are created as a result of well-recorded history of
states, local areas and families. The forebears of Chinese nation started to collect and arrange
classic works systematically 3,000 years ago. The philosophy and methods of classification,
collation and preservation have significant influence on Chinese librarianship and contribute to
the development of world civilizations.The Chinese library community has made headway in the
modern period through mutual learning and interplay with international colleagues. In particular,
since the Reform and Opening-up in 1978, with strong support from the Party (Communist Party
of China) and the government, libraries of all levels and of different types have drawn on the
strength of the international library community and explored innovative ways of development.
Considerable progress has been made in terms of institution design, facilities construction,
resources support, technology application, and service provision. The Chinese librarianship has
thus embarked on a path of development of distinctive Chinese characteristics.

1.1 Establishing a vertically and horizontally interconnected library system by overall
planning and coordination

Librarianship constitutes an important part of the cultural and educational sector. Since the
founding of the People’s Republic of China in 1949, the Chinese government has been funding the
library sector and has established a vertically and horizontally interconnected library system with
wide coverage. The Central Government has established the National Library at the national level,
and cultural administration departments at the provincial level have set up 3,176 public libraries
above the county level, and 34,000 township cultural centers and reading rooms (“Statistical
communiqué of the Ministry of Culture and Tourism of the People’s Republic of China on cultural
development in 2018”, 2019); The educational authorities have built up to 2,700 libraries in