Page 72 - Journal of Library Science in China, Vol.45, 2019

YE Jiyuan / Eight major problems in the development of the librarianship in China 071

became Dean of the School of Liberal Arts at the University of Nanking and made contributions in
philosophy. However, he chose the library science when the discipline wanted professors and made
marked contributions. Graduated from Peking University in 1920, Gu Jiegang (1981), a famous
historian, became a teaching assistant and also did cataloging work in the library. He became a
professor in Xiamen University in 1926 and Sun Yat-sen University in 1927. He once went to
Jiangsu and Zhejiang provinces with cash to purchase documents and wrote the noted plan—
Plan to Purchase Chinese Books. Qian Zhongshu, Zheng Zhenduo (two celebrated scholars) and
Jin Yong (writer) were librarians at the National Central Library at the end of the 1940s. In early
1949, Qian Zhongshu and Zheng Zhenduo were editors of Philobiblon, the English journal of the
National Central Library. Since they were famous scholars, their salaries were only lower than
Director Jiang Fucong whose salary was 640 yuan, while Qian and Zheng were 530 yuan (higher
than some professors). Jin Yong, the famed writer of gongfu stories was also once a librarian in
the National Central Library, “but of much lower ranking” (Q. Liu, Y.H. Hu, Xu, & W. Gu, 2017).
Liang Qichao (1925), a well-known scholar, took it as a great honor to be the first chairman of
the Library Association of China. In the first conference of the association, he made an insightful
speech proposing the library science of China. All of the above demonstrated that all disciplines
are equal to those scholars, let alone the interconnection among disciplines. The “Bradford’s law”
(or the “law of scattering”) in library science resembles the “80/20 rule” in enterprise management.
Dialogues about disciplines in Qian Zhongshu’s Fortress Besieged were only ridicule or satire
instead of comments. They were not opinions of Qian, which should not be mistaken. Ranks
among disciplines are discrimination which should be abandoned. Yet distinction of levels of
maturity is normal.
In the international context, library science does not die out. It has extended to the field of
information science. The word “Library” is not reflected in names of certain schools, including the
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign who has ranked No.1 in the library and information
science in the United States for many years. In 2016 it changed the School of Library and
Information Science (LIS) to the School of Information Sciences. It is noteworthy that the word
“Science” in the former is single form, while in the latter plural form, which means that “LIS has
extended to information sciences covering LIS” (University of Illinois, School of Information
Sciences, 2020a). Nevertheless, LIS still exists in its courses, degrees of master and doctor and
research projects. The school not only keeps the core of the library science but also expands and
develops it in a steady speed. The school believes that it has established various approaches in
LIS since the library science was founded in the school in 1893. “Nowadays we adhere to the
traditional field and extend the core and principles of the library science (document organization,
retrieval, utilization and preservation) to information organization, retrieval, utilization and
preservation in the information field so as to satisfy the needs of information society. The natural
integration of the library science and the information science enables us to strengthen studies,
teaching and research. We acknowledge that the wide application of new technologies are