Page 8 - Journal of Library Science in China, Vol.47, 2021

RAO Quan / National smart library system: opening a new chapter for the transformation toward smart libraries 007

to improve labor productivity, provide efficient services, satisfy various needs of the society and
[4]
generate new business value. Singapore released the iN2015 Reports in 2006 and the Infocomm
Media 2025 in 2016, which proposed to build a nationwide platform of data collection, linkage
[5]
and analysis and to predict the citizens’ demands according to the obtained data to provide better
public services and make Singapore a smart nation.
China also attaches great importance to the development and application of intelligent
technology. In the Outline of the 13th Five-Year Plan for National Economic and Social
Development issued in 2016, it was proposed for the first time to “build a batch of new model
smart cities” . The “smart society” was referred to in the report of the 19th National Congress
[6]
of the Communist Party of China for the first time, in parallel with building China’s strength in
science and technology, product quality, aerospace, cyberspace, and transportation as well as
digital China, which was a forward-looking summary of the prospect of information society and
[7]
also a strategic planning after analyzing the developmental trend of information society . In May
2020, the Report on the Work of the Government incorporated the development of a new generation
of information network into the new-type national infrastructure construction planning, which
took the new concept of development as the guidance, technology innovation as the drive and the
information network as the basis, and provided services such as digital transformation, intelligent
[8]
upgrade and integrated innovation to meet high-quality oriented developmental needs .
The goal of the smart society is to promote social structural changes and functional
reconstruction through the widespread application of intelligent technology, sharing of data
resource as well as open access to and interconnection of urban elements. It aims to construct
a new social operation system, to improve the delicacy of social management, to make basic
public services convenient, efficient and equitable, to promote the high-quality development of
economy and society, and to better meet the needs of the public for a better life. As far as current
development concerned, a smart society mainly demonstrates the following characteristics:
(1) Ubiquity of information network. Along with the advancement of “broadband China”, the
integration of urban and rural broadband network will continue to improve. The information
network develops rapidly in the direction of broadband, mobile and integration. The mobility of
fixed communication and the broadband of mobile communication becomes the trend. The next
generation network technology such as 5G and WiFi6 makes continuous progress. The high-speed
broadband wireless communication achieves full coverage. The gigabit household Internet and ten
gigabit enterprise Internet is coming true. Social public space has also achieved the full coverage of
wireless network. The information network is accelerating towards ubiquitous network shared by
people and things, and its intelligent, ubiquitous and service-oriented characteristics are becoming
increasingly obvious. The ubiquity of the network gives birth to the ubiquity of computing,
software, data and connectivity, thus laying a solid foundation for a smart society.
(2) Popularization and application of intelligent technology. With the development of
information technologies such as big data, cloud computing, Internet and IoT, ubiquitous