Page 128 - Journal of Library Science in China 2020 Vol.46

Suzanne Wallbank Rowland / Treasured family memories of Mary Elizabeth Wood (aka “Cousin Lizzie”) 127

Extended English abstracts of articles published in the Chinese edition of
Journal of Library Science in China, Vol.46, 2020

No.1

Library development in an open society
CHEN Chuanfu & LI Qiushi
〇a ∗
Modern library system was a product of the challenges coming from knowledge monopoly
and closed society. However, with the development of the Internet and open contents
movement since late last century, the world has entered into a new open environment of
information, data and intelligence. In such a new open society, data becomes an important
factor of production, providing impetus to the process of innovation, scientific research and
social governance.
Information/data disclosure, acquisition and sharing constitute the basic dimensions of
open environment. Driven by the Internet and information technologies, the open government
information, open research data and open education resources have laid the foundation of open
information environment. ICTs, open network and the growing commercial digital platforms
service reshape the user information and data acquisition mode. Open data, open science movement
and data services provided by public and private sectors make data sharing cheaper, more efficient
and convenient.
While the open environment is transforming the ecology of supply and consumption of
knowledge and information, the advantages and traditional functions of the library are severely
challenged. The main challenges are: the lack of data in the library collection is difficult to meet
the increasing information demand of the society. Network service, public service, commercial
information service and other new services compete with libraries, resulting in the loss of library
users. Under the trend of disintermediation, the knowledge intermediary function of libraries is
being replaced, squeezing the living space of the library. The library’s research service, reference
service, document delivery and other services have been replaced by open access, self-archiving,
self-publishing, social document sharing platforms and other services. Compared with the low-
cost and widespread open network environment, the cost and efficiency advantages of library
information services are declining, which makes the library face survival risks. However, the new

∗ Correspondence should be addressed to CHEN Chuanfu, Email:cfchen@whu.edu.cn, ORCID:0000-0003-1163-7691.