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Library History of China - World Libraries; K. McCook - Summer 2022
Module 5

National Library of China

 * The Digital Library Promotion Project was launched in 2011, with the backing of the State Council. The goal of the Digital Library Promotion Project is to connect libraries at all levels, and to make resources and services accessible to more than 3,000 libraries country-wide. In order to allow for a total sharing of digital resources across the country, this project registered and integrated resources in libraries according to the principle of, 'centralized management of metadata, decentralized storage of object data.' By 2013, hardware to support this project had been installed into 30 provincial libraries and 139 prefectural-level libraries, which helped register over 1.5 million metadata in 123 databases, making over 12 terabytes of digital resources available to share. That same year saw a 67 percent increase from the previous year in users accessing the User Management System, with 221,000 visits. The Mobile Reading Platform of Digital Library Promotion Project was also first put into affect in 2013, and more than 10 provinces began to provide new cell phone and digital television-based media services. (Yongjin)
 * In 2012, the NLC allocated 11,549 square meters (124,312.4 square feet) to construct the National Museum of Classic Books, which opened in 2014. This museum features rare books and maps, Yangshilei architecture drawings, stone and bronze rubbings, 3,000-year old oracle bones, and many other unique items. (Yongjin) The National Museum of Classic Books, which is located in the south area of the Chinese National Library, is open 9am-5pm, Tuesday to Sunday. (http://www.nlc.cn/newen/newVisitUs/oghs/)
 * The NLC covers an area of 280,000 square meters (Yongjin)
 * Due to difficulties in preserving ancient texts, the NLC implemented several projects to work towards not only better preserving the original materials, but also making copies available for research through microphotography, photocopy and digitization. The projects implemented to work on these preservation issues are the Chinese Ancient Books Reproduction Project, the Chinese Ancient Books Protection Plan, and the Minguo Materials (1911-1949) Protection Plan, to name just a few. The Chinese Ancient Books Reproduction Project was started in 2002, and its main goal was to copy and republish selected rare books. In their first phase, nearly 800 works from the Song and Yuan Dynasty were copied, reprinted, and distributed internationally to more than 100 libraries. The Chinese Ancient Books Protection Plan, which began in 2007, and the Minguo Materials (1911-1949) Protection Plan, which began in 2012, both strive to establish an integrated preservation mechanism at the national level. (Yongjin)

Libraries in China

 * These early private libraries acted more as book repositories than libraries. The actions of book repositories were often limited to basic functions such as collecting, preserving, and compiling books. There were four major types of book repositories in the Qing Dynasty (1636 AD–1911 AD): Government, private, academy (shuyuan), and temple book repositories. (Zhang).

Notes, Misc.

 * The first library law of China was enacted by the Ministry of Education in 1909. According to this law, the aim of the library was to “preserve Chinese classics, to disseminate knowledge, to provide research facilities, and to collect materials for the free use of the public” (Yu, P. C., & Chiou-Peng, T., 2010, p. 981). Books were not able to be checked out by visitors of the library, and foreign books were not allowed in the library at all. This first library law applied to not just the National Library but also to public libraries at every level. The second library law was more democratic. Enacted in 1915, this library law, Regulations Governing Popular Libraries, stated that public libraries should provide not just rare books or government books, but also popular books for the general public.