Page 87 - Journal of Library Science in China 2020 Vol.46

086 Journal of Library Science in China, Vol.12, 2020

nine-year compulsory education in 1986. The literacy level of rural residents has been greatly
improved, but it is undeniable that the literacy difficulties still exist widely among middle-aged
and elderly people in rural areas. At present, we entrusted the promotion of cultural knowledge
and literacy to school education. Institutions such as libraries and farmers’ reading rooms have
not assumed corresponding functions. Yet the inherent good of community and rural libraries in
improving literacy or educational level has been proved (Parry, 2011). Therefore, while continuing
to guarantee the nine-year compulsory education for teenagers, rural public reading space should
be taken as an important supplement to improve the literacy and educational level of rural adult
residents, and activities of literacy education and cultural knowledge popularization should be
carried out in place such as rural reading rooms.
The accumulation of cultural capital has laid the ability foundation of participating in public
reading in rural areas. The further technical strategy is to transform the ability foundation into
participation behavior. The follow-up behavior is to improve rural residents’ cognition of the
significance of public reading, increase their contact and use experience, and develop the habit of
public reading. The Party, the government, schools, village committees and reading institutions
should adapt to the actual conditions in rural areas, and adopt the method with a combination
of idea education and leading example. The aim is to help rural residents to realize the value of
public reading for the improvement of education levels of individuals and family as well as the
growth of intellectual and economic capital to elevate their reading cognition. The main supplier
of public reading should carry out a variety of reading activities to spread the most popular reading
resources for rural residents such as agricultural science and technology, medical care, leisure and
entertainment through lectures, knowledge exchange and speeches. In this way reading activities
can squeeze into the leisure time of rural residents and gradually infiltrate into their daily life. It
will help rural residents to gain a sense of fulfillment from the resources that they are interested
in, accumulate reading experience, and enhance their recognition of reading and reading activities.
Meanwhile, we should strengthen the guidance of rural residents’ reading methods and ability, and
help them to know what to read, how to read, and how to integrate reading into production and
living so as to stimulate their interest and demand in reading.

4.2.2 Explore the cooperative production mode of stimulus, optimize the allocation of public
reading resources, and innovate effective stimulus means
Under the influence of the industry system, the public reading space such as farmers’ reading
rooms, rural cultural rooms and rural libraries in rural areas belong to different public cultural
departments, which leads to the dispersion and disorder of public reading resources. However,
the “top-down” and “universal” distribution mode of the “project system” is implemented in
the cultural benefit projects such as farmers’ reading rooms, which also leads to the mismatch
of supply and demand of rural public reading resources. In addition, the deviation of the focus
of rural grassroots management services and the lack of publicity and mobilization lead to the