Page 26 - Journal of Library Science in China 2020 Vol.46

LI Yuhai, JIN Zhe, LI Jiahui & LI Jue / Five questions in the construction of smart library in China 025

Particularly, when defining smart library, it is necessary to distinguish it from digital library.
First, comparing with traditional libraries, the digital library emphasizes the digital conversion of
print materials to accomplish the digital storage, management and application of documents. Its
fundamental purpose is to permanently preserve digital documents and provide convenient access
to them. Smart library is generated on the basis of digital library, which is also the transformed
and upgraded version of it. It gives “life” to big amount of data on literature resources and use
behavior in the digital library, that focusing on data acquisition and analysis; emphasizes on the
description and use of resources, that highlighting decision-making based on data analysis, in
order to achieve full utilization of resources; and emphasizes on the study of user behavior, that
attempting to provide personalized services. Additionally, the relationship between digital library
and smart library is iterative. Digital library is the foundation of smart library, and smart library is
the more advanced stage in the development of digital library. However, because construction of
smart library is still at the exploratory stage, not single smart library has been completed yet. By
looking through the all of China, there is still a long way to fulfill its entirely transformation into
smart form. Therefore, there is a long period of time that digital libraries and smart libraries will
both exist, either in concept or in construction.

2 Criteria for smart library

Until what development level, the library can be recognized as smart library? What are the strict
criterias should a smart library meet? At present, due to the unclear definition of smart library,
the evaluation criteria for it has not been identified either. Based on the research results on smart
library in China and abroad, the authors propose judgement criteria for smart library with the
following four aspects.
First, the intelligentization of business management, especially the core business. Among
the existing businesses of the library, such as book loan, book purchasing, replenishment
of bookshelves, document delivery and document recommendation, they all can be entirely
intelligentized. Only when the existing business management of the library is highly intelligent, it
then may possible to transform the library into a smart one.
Second, the smartness of service. Smart services require the collaboration between “resources,
technologies and personnel”, in which resources provide the foundation, technologies provide
guidance, and personnel are the core (DING, Y. Q. CHU, ZHU, & Z. Y. LIU, 2019). In terms of
resources, it is necessary to increase the smartness of all the phases from collection, compilation,
storage, analysis to delivery. In terms of technologies, the Internet of Things, RFID, big data,
blockchain, cloud computing, artificial intelligence and other advanced technologies are gradually
applied to the smart services of the library, which saves time and efforts for readers, increases
learning and working efficiency, and brings new service experiences. In terms of personnel, we
shall consider the training for both librarians and users, not only improving the theoretical and