Natoinal Library of Australia - Gateways

ISSN 1443-0568 | no. 71 | October 2004


Secondment to the National Library of China

From late March to the end of May, I was fortunate enough to spend 10 weeks in China, mainly at the National Library of China (NLC), <http://www.nlc.gov.cn>, learning in depth about its operations. NLC is as different to National Library of Australia as Beijing is to Canberra, and it was really an eye-opening experience. While there I took the opportunity to call on my suppliers in Beijing, as well as visiting a few producers of e-book and online journal database products.

NLC is a huge organisation with over 1,300 staff. Apart from its library operations, it also has a librarian training centre, several companies—the China Digital Library Co. Ltd. and a publishing company—plus the China Library Association under its wings. NLC plays the role of a national, public and parliamentary library all at the same time, which has a strong impact on its operations. For instance, its Chinese acquisitions and cataloguing departments not only need to deal with the three legal deposit copies of over 100 000 new monographs published every year, but also with the three additional purchased copies for most of the titles so as to satisfy users who borrow from the library.

Public libraries in the community are not as well developed as in Australia and the 30-odd reading rooms in the NLC have to accommodate the needs of the 8 000–13 000 daily readers, with some opening every day of the year from 9 a.m. to 9 p.m. The Reference Department provides a free service to government and party officials, whereas general users must use the service on a fee-paying basis.

CNMARC format, based on UNIMARC, is used in Chinese catalogue records, as well as Chinese Subject Headings and the Chinese Library Classification System. Both Chinese Subject Headings and the Chinese Library Classification System are maintained by NLC. Western language materials, on the other hand, are catalogued using MARC21, LCSH and the Chinese Library Classification System. As for resource sharing of cataloguing data, NLC is host to the Online Catalogue Center, which is a national bibliographic database utilising mainly the bibliographic data created by NLC. The database is mostly used by provincial and public libraries for downloading records for copy cataloguing. There is a bibliographic utility for their counterparts in universities, CALIS or the China Academic Library and Information System, run by the Peking University Library. The union catalogue of CALIS also offers document supply functions and CALIS arranges for the group purchase of overseas online databases. The Academy of Sciences and the Academy of Social Sciences also have their own union catalogue.

The second phase of NLC is under construction at this very moment and is due to open in October 2007. This includes a new library building with improved space for both library users and materials, as well as an opportunity to introduce new services such as virtual reference, web archiving and improved access to digital collections.

China is the fastest developing economy in the world, and Beijing is packed with construction sites as the 2008 Olympics approaches. NLC is also undergoing major reforms. At the end of my visit the senior staff at NLC were all busy discussing imminent personnel reforms as NLC has been named by the Ministry of Culture as the pilot organization in the government reform of agencies in the ministry.

Major reforms of the publishing industry were also announced by the government during my visit. It is really a privilege to see these changes first hand. My heartfelt thanks to NLC for letting me spend a most memorable 10 weeks there.
—Wan Wong, Asian Collections

| Contents list for this issue of Gateways |