The opening of university library to the society is the work carried out by university library on the premise of completing the service to the school. We should have a correct interpretation of this "openness", discuss problems according to the actual situation in China, and avoid using unrealistic theories or reasons to demand and evaluate this openness.
Keywords: utilization rate of open literature in university libraries
For quite a long time, there has been a lot of discussion in the library circle about the opening of university libraries to the society. Recently, this opinion has become a social voice. There are some mixed and even opposing opinions in the online discussion on whether university libraries should be open to the society.
I have no objection to the opening of university libraries. In fact, the library I serve is open to the outside world, but it is impossible to "make things bigger" and "stronger" because of the conditions of the library. However, I don't agree with some theories that advocate openness (at least for reasons). Here, I put forward some personal views for the reference of my peers.
Some viewpoints that advocate or agree with the opening of university libraries to the society generally put forward such theoretical or factual basis;
One day: public resources should be provided for the public to enjoy, and the funds of university libraries mainly come from the public, so university libraries have the obligation to serve the public.
Secondly, the university library is a closed system with low resource utilization rate and needs to be opened to the outside world.
Day 3: Due to the weak foundation and unbalanced development of public libraries in China, and the rich literature resources of university libraries, university libraries should join the ranks of public libraries.
The above inference seems reasonable, but in fact it is mixed with some vague concepts. Between the premise and the conclusion, the necessary restrictions are omitted, and the conclusion is misleading. So it is necessary to clarify one by one.
1. On the enjoyment of "public * * * resources", the so-called "public * * * resources" said that the general logic is that public * * * resources should be used by the public. It seems that if the university library is not open to the outside world, it will face a moral trial: the university library spends taxpayers' money, but in turn refuses to serve taxpayers.
We say that public resources undoubtedly serve the public, but today's public resources are not the public resources of primitive society, because crude resources can be simply enjoyed; Today's public resources are a huge and complex system. What would it be like if any public resources were opened to the public without distinction or restriction? The answer is self-evident, which can only lead to confusion in use and eventually lead to waste and destruction of public resources.
The literature information resources of a society is a complex system, which is generated, grown, differentiated and developed under the stimulation of different needs of different groups of people. With the development of social division of labor to specialization, the needs of different groups of people for libraries are increasingly diversified and specialized; In order to meet the different needs of different people, different types of libraries came into being, and different types of libraries have different collections and service objects. University library is the companion of higher education, and the library literature resources are the educational and teaching resources first. The service target of this kind of resource is very clear, and the quantity is generally determined. These factors naturally bring a series of work and management principles of university libraries. For example, the construction of literature resources in university libraries must focus on the requirements of discipline construction, regardless of the so-called "social needs" (meeting social needs is the overall mission of universities, which should be realized mainly through teaching and scientific research in universities, rather than "concretization" in university libraries. This problem should be a separate one. The school's staffing of the library is also determined according to the total number of groups served by the library, and it is impossible to determine it according to the uncertain "social readers". If the readers of teachers and students in colleges and universities are not satisfied with the library, it is of little significance for the library to play the banner of "opening to the society" except "putting on a show". In fact, in recent years, colleges and universities have expanded their enrollment on a large scale, and the number of students has greatly expanded. Please see the following table (data from China Education Yearbook and China Education Research Network):
Under such circumstances, the university library is overcrowded, and the manpower and space of the library are unprecedentedly tense. The problem of occupying seats in reading rooms and study rooms is becoming more and more serious, which is a headache for university librarians. Faced with such a severe situation, it is unrealistic to force university libraries to "fully open" to the society.
2. About "closed" and "low resource utilization"
The so-called "closed" and "low resource utilization rate" of university libraries are not realistic assertions. The goal of university library resource construction comes from its own function. The first is to meet the literature information needs of teachers and students in our school. In the case that the resources of our school cannot be met, the library will rely on the resource sharing system of this system to seek help. In this system, seeking help and offering help are two-way. In China, this mechanism has now become a grand view. This is the largest and most standardized "higher education document guarantee system" (CALIS) in China. In this system, collaborative purchasing of important literature resources, joint cataloging of library resources, inter-library copy and transmission of literature resources, and cooperative development of subject information navigation database have all formed a scale.
China Humanities and Social Sciences Literature Center is a document sharing service institution in colleges and universities, which was established in March 2004. Up to now, there are more than 7,500 foreign periodicals in humanities and social sciences, nearly one million foreign books, 260,000 electronic books and 900 electronic periodicals. There are 300 member libraries in colleges and universities across the country. By the end of 2007, the center's "Journal Catalogue Database of Humanities and Social Sciences in Colleges and Universities" had been searched for nearly 30 million times, with full-text downloads of electronic resources1190,000 times and more than 200,000 original texts. The utilization rate of library resources was 100%, among which the journals with the most searches reached more than 600,000 times and the journals with the most requests for original texts. The * * * enjoyment mechanism of national university libraries is the most effective "opening", and university libraries should not be labeled as "closed".
In addition, the daily management of university libraries is also a part of university management. In order to ensure the teaching order of the school, the university library is not open to the outside world casually, which is easy to understand and has nothing to do with "closure". Here is an example from America. On August 24th, 2006, the 68th IFLA Conference was held in Boston, USA. The theme of the conference is "Libraries and Librarians: The Important Role in the Knowledge Age". At the request of delegates from all over the world, the organizer of the conference planned to organize all delegates to visit the library of Harvard University, but it was politely declined by the university. The school believes that our library serves the study and research of teachers and students, and the visit of conference representatives will inevitably interfere with and affect the normal study and research of teachers and students in the library. I only saw it for half a day and was rejected. If it is in the eyes of us "closed" theorists, how serious it would be! In the article discussing that university libraries should be open to the society, it is repeatedly mentioned that university libraries in developed countries such as the United States, Britain and Japan should be open to the society, which is the reason why university libraries in China should be open. However, looking for some articles that really understand and introduce the opening of foreign university libraries, we can see that the so-called opening is conditional and limited.
The problem of "low utilization rate of resources" is easy to become a false proposition because of its fuzziness. First of all, the basic purpose of the composition of literature resources in university libraries is to ensure the literature resources needed by school teaching and scientific research. The higher the guarantee rate of literature resources, the higher the satisfaction of teachers and students, which is also the original intention of establishing a literature sharing system called "guarantee system" in university libraries across the country. However, the guarantee rate and utilization rate are two concepts, and the resources that meet the guarantee rate may not guarantee the utilization rate at the same time. For example, the bulky literature purchased by university libraries is necessary for related teaching and scientific research, but its utilization rate is far less than that of ordinary academic books compared with the readers of the whole school; Compared with ordinary Chinese databases, the utilization rate of some high-priced professional foreign language databases is relatively low. Even if some teaching reference books are required reading for one major, they may be completely unfamiliar with another major, and the utilization rate of these books will be far from that of some popular books. The utilization rate of resources can be used as an effective standard to measure and evaluate public libraries that mainly meet the reading needs of ordinary people. However, it may be misleading to measure and evaluate the libraries of universities and research institutes whose main tasks are teaching and research only by utilization rate.
Secondly, for some universities with a long history, the accumulation of their literature resources is academic and systematic, which is the basis for them to achieve a high guarantee rate of literature resources. Compared with some commonly used resources, this foundation is a huge denominator. On this basis, the utilization rate is determined by comparing the total number of documents with the utilization rate of documents. A school with a long history is certainly not as efficient as a school with a short history. If we evaluate these two libraries, can we draw a fair conclusion? Due to the low utilization rate of resources, it is really a random prescription to require university libraries to be "fully open" to the society. To take a step back, even if it is really "fully open", the resources with low utilization rate will still be low.
In fact, the resource sharing activities of university library system not only improve the resource guarantee rate, but also improve the utilization rate of some scarce resources and high-priced resources. For university libraries, improving the utilization rate of resources is the "fruit" of literature resources, not the "cause". Of course, on the other hand, considering the benefit of capital investment, colleges and universities will inevitably pay attention to the utilization of library resources, which depends on the reader survey and utilization forecast before resource purchase. University libraries can only ensure the rational use of resources purchase funds through preliminary work, rather than increasing the utilization rate by expanding "opening" in the later period. If the literature resources in colleges and universities are idle or the utilization rate is not high, we should first consider readjusting the resources (including funds, manpower, venues, etc. ) and service library, rather than the so-called "open to the society".
3. About "the weak foundation of national library" and the opening of university libraries.
The weak foundation of the National Library is rooted in the weak economic strength of the country. To solve this problem, it is irrelevant to ask university libraries to open to the society. Not to mention the shortage of funds and serious debts of university libraries in the past quite a period, even today, the "richness" of university library resources is limited. The more obvious problem is that there are obvious differences between the literature resources that public libraries in China can't buy because of the serious shortage of investment and the literature resources system of university libraries, and they can't replace each other, otherwise the reasons for library classification will not exist. Judging from the content of resources, the "rich collection" of university libraries can not be used to fill the shortage of public literature information resources at all.
In addition, the task of university libraries and public libraries is actually to provide the guarantee of literature resources. It's just that different types of libraries provide security in different ways. For university libraries and research institute libraries, it is mainly to solve the problem of ensuring the literature resources in their systems, and then provide the overall guarantee of academic resources in countries or regions through resource enjoyment. For public libraries, it is to establish as many service outlets as possible. Due to the different scope and methods of protection, the distribution of university libraries and public libraries hardly overlaps. In developed countries, there are specific requirements for the distribution of public libraries. At home, some experts also put forward corresponding suggestions. As Mr. Zhan, director of the National Library, put forward, it should be stipulated by law to meet the requirement that urban people can find libraries within 1.5 km. What is clear here is that even if it is suitable to be open to the public in distribution, there is no reason to require university libraries to be open to the public like public libraries; Moreover, the existence of university libraries can not reduce the investment of public libraries in online distribution.
In short, the opening of university libraries to the society can only be a supplement to the scale of social public information resources and basically meet the needs, and it is the icing on the cake (this is the role played by the opening of university libraries in developed countries). We can't expect university libraries to "send charcoal in the snow" because of the huge vacancy of public literature information demand.
4. How do university libraries open to the society?
The opening of university libraries to the society is based on the Regulations of University Libraries (Revised) promulgated by the Ministry of Education in 2002. Article 21 of the Regulations stipulates: "Libraries of colleges and universities with conditions should be as open as possible to social readers and community readers. Literature information and technical consulting services for the society can charge appropriate fees according to the consumption of materials and labor or the actual benefits of service results. " The proposal of this policy has actually taken into account the fact that the foundation of China's library industry is weak, but the premise of this policy is still based on ensuring the basic functions of university libraries. Because the basic task of university library is to serve its readers, restrictive languages such as "conditional university library" and "as far as possible" are added to this document. The spirit of this document is positive, but it is also cautious. When discussing the opening of university libraries to the society, we should also adhere to this attitude.
As far as domestic university libraries are concerned, the work of opening to the society has not yet been carried out. Many university libraries have a temporary library card system to receive people who need to use documents for scientific research or research study. There are also some university libraries that, within their power, carry out some activities to serve the grassroots and communities. But in any case, the opening of university libraries to the society on the basis of serving their readers can only be partial and limited, but not comprehensive and unconditional. For example, we can and should receive social readers who study A Dream of Red Mansions, but it is impossible to meet the needs of social readers to borrow A Dream of Red Mansions. The latter is undoubtedly the responsibility of public libraries and community libraries.
The opening of university libraries to the society should not be a problem. The documents of the Ministry of Education also put forward clear principles, high theories and new achievements, and made efforts to participate in various international projects and cooperate with foreign counterparts. Of course, to keep up with the pace of internationalization, we must improve our English reading and writing. Today, the era when individuals engage in scientific research behind closed doors is gone forever. As a researcher of library science, the spirit of cooperation is very important. Only by cooperating with peers, but also with scholars of library science at home and abroad and even scholars of information, computer and other related disciplines can we have high-quality research results.
3.5 improve the level of domestic journals
Among the existing academic journals in China, there are only dozens of sci-tech journals, which is zero as far as library science is concerned. From this, we can see the gap between the periodicals of library science in China and the international level. In order to further promote the research of library science in China to the world, we must run our own academic journals well in order to be recognized by international peers.
At present, there is still a lack of necessary communication between editors and authors of domestic library science journals; The average delay of publishing papers is 8 months, which is much higher than the level of foreign journals, which greatly affects the quality of papers. The small number of all-English periodicals of library science also hinders the international exchange of library science. These are the directions for library science journals to realize internationalization and improve their international influence.
3.6 Integration of Library Science and Library Information
Library science is comprehensive, realistic and practical, which can provide information and knowledge management methods to all walks of life and can and should occupy an important position in social life.
In order to gain its due position, library science must be guided by Marxist theory and take Marxist view of matter, consciousness and dialectical negation as the basic principles of library science research. Library science will develop into a complete and socially recognized science by comprehensively applying scientific methods such as observation and experiment, logical thinking and systematic method, combining with the knowledge of various disciplines and absorbing various new technologies.
IFLA regards library and information service as a whole phrase, which shows that library and information service are inseparable, and the relationship between library science and information science is getting closer and closer in the new period. The academic circles put forward the concept of integration of library science and information science long ago, and the research on integration of library science and information science is of great help to the development of both disciplines. The infiltration of information science, computer and network technology into library science and the emergence of a large number of librarians with computer professional background provide new support for the development of modern library science. All these are helpful to keep pace with the development of international library science at a higher starting point and improve the academic status of library science in China. On the basis of the integration of library and information, from the perspective of the whole information management discipline, we will find a new development direction and win a better prospect.
4. Conclusion
Library and information researchers should publish valuable, innovative and high-level research results in important international academic journals. At present, the relevant departments of our country have gradually begun to pay attention to the scientific research work in the library field, and we have a good opportunity. Both internal conditions and external environment are conducive to improving the research level of library science in China, thus occupying a place in the field of international library science.
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