Page 76 - Journal of Library Science in China 2020 Vol.46

CHEN Geng & HU Yachun / The attribution analysis of low participation in public reading 075
among rural residents: A survey from 77 administrative villages and rural libraries in Hubei Province

public reading. The reading resources in public space such as farmers’ reading rooms are primarily
distributed by the government. The government promotes the construction of farmers’ reading
rooms with an explicit and quantitative index from the supply-side perspective, and fails to respond
to rural reading demands. As a result, the mismatch between supply and demand of reading
resources becomes increasingly prominent, which is manifested in the mismatch of reading carrier
and content resources, as well as the lack of public reading activities.
In terms of reading carriers, the public reading space such as farmers’ reading rooms attaches
great importance to paper resources such as books while neglects electronic resources, which
discourages the enthusiasm of rural residents to participate in public reading. The main types of
books and periodicals read by rural residents were e-books, mobile phones, website articles and
other news (63.3%), which accounted for a higher proportion than paper books (57.6%). However,
of the 77 administrative villages surveyed, only 33 farmers’ reading rooms (42.9%) were equipped
with electronic reading rooms where the conditions of computers were not good and some even
not connected to the Internet. At the same time, many computers were used for other purposes
or even a kind of decoration. The insufficient electronic reading resources in rural reading space
such as farmers’ reading rooms have an influence on the participation of residents. A 50-year-old
woman said, “I now get information through the app and WeChat official accounts. I downloaded
the Yunquyi app to learn health knowledge. Then I share the knowledge on Moments and among
family groups in WeChat. I feel that most people in the village read official accounts in WeChat,
and few read books.”
In the aspect of content resources, problems of mismatch of resource types and update delay
exist. The survey found that the main types of information and reading content accessed by rural
residents were life (41.4%) and political news (39.2%) , but the resource types in the farmers’
reading room were as follows: practical technology (21.0%) , medical and health care of rural
life (19.0%) , education and culture (16.0%) , popular science for children (15.0%) , biographies
of political and legal figures (15.0%) , history and literature (14.0%) , which failed to conform
to the needs of rural residents. A mother who took care of her children at home said, “In fact, the
original intention of the farmers’ reading room is very good, but young mothers would like to
show children some children’s books or read parenting books. But the books are obviously old-
fashioned, the types are relatively few, and thus not very practical.” Another farmer also said,
“Middle-aged people like to read novels, such as detective and mystery novels, martial arts novels.
The books in the farmers’ reading room are all classic masterpieces. There are few novels, even
if there are some, they are incomplete.” The time lag of resources also affects the match between
supply and demand. A chicken farmer said, “When I first started working as a chicken farmer, I
just flipped through the books on poultry breeding when I had nothing to do. As a result, I found
that the technologies in the books were too backward. They were all versions of many years ago,
talking about artificial breeding. But now it’s mechanized breeding, and there’s no help at all.” A
manager of the farmers’ reading room said, “Many agricultural books here were donated. They are