Chinese Values Guiding Principles for To-day’s Library

Services

Tze-chung Li 李志鍾Professor and Dean Emeritus

Dominican University Graduate School of Library and Information Science

Fortune Cookie

“If you wish to succeed, consult three old people.”

Major academic libraries budget cut

• Cornell 940,000 for collection

• Emory 200,000 for collection

• MIT 400,000 for collection

• Tennessee 1,300,000 total

• Washington 2,400,000 total

• UCLA 400,000 for collectio

• Yale 900,000 for collection

public libraries budget cut

• Michigan 40 %

• Ohio 30 %

• California 10%

• Chicago 11%

Richard McGregor

• China’s star is shining more brightly than ever and China has the ability to remake the world economy

Alan Brinkley

• Henry Luce used the term “American Century” in 1941.

Three Chinese Values

• 苟日新 , 日日新 , 又日新 guo ri xin, ri ri xin, you ri xin (Do new thing every day, new from day to day, and newer next day).

• 有教無類 you jiao wu lei (Teaching should be for all, irrespective of their social classes).

• 民為貴 , 社稷次之 min wei gui, she ji ci zhi (People first, society second)

• First, 苟日新 , 日日新 , 又日新 guo ri xin, ri ri xin, you ri xin (Do new thing every day, new from day to day, and newer next day).

3G Information

• generation of books

• generation of microform

• generation of digital

Imposing array of digital information achievements

• online databases

• CD-ROMs

• multimedia and the Internet

• The Monkey King 孫悟空 in a fiction, Journal to the West 西遊記 , can travel over 10,000 miles by one somersault.

• Google Book Search (GBS)

• University of Tennessee Libraries

• Harvard Digital Repository Service (DRS)

• Amazon Kindle

Digital library impacts on its use

• status of research library is irrelevant

• privilege of browsing books in library stacks is gone

• use of several books on the table is not attainable

Free Text Search

In any search device, the free text is a basic technique You can enter any word or words and words in any order to search.

But the free text search results in large recall, less relevancy.

Pro Quest Dialog

Dialog Search

• qualify or combine your search by title, author, corporate source, document type, journal name, language, publication year, and others, depending upon the data format.

• sort the result by author, title, and date in some databases.

Librarians must catch up every day new

developments and innovations. Librarians have duties involve licensing, buying digital materials, producing, preserving digital, assigning identification markers called meta-tags for easy access, researching copyright matters and effectively using them

Second, 有教無類 you jiao wu lei (Teaching should be for all, irrespective of their social classes).

Search Engines

All search engines, such as Altavista, Ask , Exalead , Go, Google, HotBot, Yahoo, and the latest Bing provide tree-text searching

A librarian must teach readers to use qualified search. For instance, Google’s simple qualifiers are symbols such as

+ - * “” ~

Alvin Johnson

A public library is a school for the young and a college for the adult

Russell A. Hall

• a library school should offer a course “Teaching how to Teach”

• Or, “library schools are doing their students and the future employers of these students a disservice by failing to recognize user education as a core competency of today’s information professional

The third Chinese value is 民為貴 , 社稷次之 min wei gui, she ji ci zhi (People first, society second).

ALA’s Core Competences of Librarians

The role of library and information professions is in the promotion of democratic principles and intellectual freedom (including freedom of expression, thought, and conscience).

Archibald MacLeish

Librarians had burdens to educate people to understand the value and culture of democracy

Some defending freedom cases

• United States et al v. American Library Association et al (2003)

• American Library Association v. Pataki (1997)

Politics in Librarianship course

The course studies politics, policies, and legislation in librarianship. One of the topics for study is to study the value and conscience of democracy, freedom, equality, and the rule of law.

• As librarians, you have huge responsibilities in promoting, advancing knowledge and in defending democracy, freedom of speech, and the rule of law.

• Librarians must abide by Chinese values in actively and passionately carrying out the tasks mentioned above for excellence in library services.

Thanks

謝謝