Page 14 - Journal of Library Science in China 2020 Vol.46

RAO Quan / Review and outlook on the problems of library transformation 013

changing ways of the public to access information and knowledge, and also the development mode
of the library. For one thing, the booming development and application of digital technologies
create new library services which provide more possibilities for the library to enrich service,
innovate service methods and improve service efficiency. For another, the rapid expansion of the
Internet knowledge and information service market attracts the public’s attention and occupies their
modest time, which has a great impact on the library as the major information service provider and
poses challenges for the library to maintain and extend information service.
Netizens in China spend more and more time online every week on average in recent years,
which was 27.6 hours in 2018 and about 4 hours one day. More time was spent on various mobile
applications. The percentage of time spent on instant messaging, online video, online music, short
videos and online audio was 53.1% (China Internet Network Information Center (CNNIC), 2019).
In comparison, the cost of reading in the library is relatively high, and thus some people no more
consider the library as the primary source to acquire information. In 2018 the number of netizens
was 829 million, of which the number of users in online education, livestreaming and online video
was 201 million, 397 million, and 612 million respectively. The number increased at a high speed
(CNNIC, 2019). In contrast, the online visit to the public library’s websites has been declining in
recent three years. The online visit to public libraries at the provincial level was down by 22.42%
in 2017 than the previous year. As a result, it has become an obvious challenge to the library to
attract and retain users under the highly developed Internet information environment. The library
should accelerate the transformation towards digitalization and networking. However, from another
perspective, the online reading platforms of varying quality provides an opportunity for the library
to win a place in online information service drawing upon its professional information processing
abilities. For the past few years, libraries of all levels have actively applied modern information
technologies to set up service platforms and explored the digitalization and networking of the
library. Yet the resources and services on these platforms are generally not interconnected and
information isolated islands come into being. The utilization efficiency of information resources
should also be elevated. Especially, in comparison with some commercial information service
platforms, the library service seems to be passive and backward. The library is still passively
waiting for users’ requests, while commercial platforms have applied artificial intelligence (AI)
in information recommendation to provide more intelligent service. Taking the ByteDance as an
example, through information delivery service based on intelligence algorithm, the number of
active users of Toutiao, one of ByteDance’s products, exceeded 200 million, and the number of
active users of TikTok totaled 500 million within over two years. We can draw some inspiration
from its popularity: 1) The methods of exhibition and service of resources in libraries should be
changed; 2) The library should develop intelligent information service based on AI; 3) The library
should improve stickiness of netizens.
Another important characteristic of the global technological revolution is the explosive
development of AI. AI has achieved great progress in key areas such as computer vision, machine