Page 54 - Journal of Library Science in China 2020 Vol.46

LI Jingxia & LI Zhenwu / Inquiring into and reflecting on library professionalism in the new era: 053
Taking Wuhan public libraries’ anti-pandemic practice as an example

of social division of labor. We have to communicate and interact with other partners in which the
library and external stakeholders (in this article it mainly refers to providers of library resources
and products such as database vendors, outsourcers, system vendors and publishers) constitute a
unique ecosystem.
In recent years, the Chinese government has made more investment in the librarianship,
which furnishes the solid foundation for the development of the ecosystem. In the ecosystem,
stakeholders such as system and database vendors guarantee the operation of the library in a
relatively convenient and efficient way, which supports the library’s professional functions. With
the ever-growing extent and scale, the external partners penetrate deep into the library’s operations
and acquire more and more discourse and influence. In such a case two tendencies come into
being.
Firstly, the traditional library’s professionalism centers on information processing. But as the
advancement of the library’s ecosystem, the dominant role of the professional work has been
transferred from the library to stakeholders. As stated by CHENG Huanwen, “in the printed age,
the library possessed the ownership and management right of paper materials. That is why library
studies flourished in all fields such as classification and cataloging. However, in the digital age,
the library has lost the ownership and management right of digital resources…All techniques
and methods about the management of digital resources come from the system and database
vendors instead of the library community.” (CHENG & J. Q. LIU, 2020) If the words “library
studies” in this paragraph are changed to “libraries” or “librarians”, it is still logical. At present,
the library enjoys good momentum of development. But once the government’s input decreases,
stakeholders may possibly leave us which would lead the librarianship to falter if we do not pay
attention to internal professional forces centered on the talent construction. To be objective, today
the most reliable partners are still associate libraries. Natural bonds among similar institutions are
replaceable. Consequently, although the negative effect of deprofessionalization is not so visible
at the time being, we should attach great importance to developing professionalism from the
perspective of sustainable development.
Secondly, as the traditional professionalism gradually dissolves, new professionalism is building
up. The idea of “people oriented” was proposed decades ago. It is in the new century or recent ten
years that public libraries begin to shift from “books oriented” to “people oriented”. While reading
promotion activities are in full swing, activities become core operations of libraries. To adapt to
changes in organizational structure and operational focus, libraries in the new era should be endowed
with new professional connotations.
Through the deconstruction of the library ecosystem, the main idea of this article becomes
apparent: what kind of professional skills and literacy should librarians in the new era possess
to achieve the sustainable development of the librarianship? Although we cannot give a definite
answer to the question at the moment, it is clear that librarians in the new era must have the
abilities to normalize, guide and coordinate the sound development of the library ecosystem instead