Comprehensive Evaluation Of Service Level Of County Public Libraries In Poverty-stricken Areas Of Hubei Province

As the symbol and soul of a country,culture is a powerful driving force to promote national rejuvenation and national development.Since the 21st century,culture as a soft power has played an increasingly important role in international competition.The report of the Eighteenth National Congress of the Communist Party of China has clearly defined the goal of building a strong socialist cultural country.Public cultural service is the most basic factor of social stability,harmony,healthy development and forming social cohesion.Promoting the level of public cultural service not only helps to improve national cultural quality,but also lays a solid foundation for the great development and prosperity of culture,thus becoming an important strategy of national development in the new era.Since the reform and opening up 40 years ago,our country has made remarkable achievements in the field of public cultural construction,but we should also be aware that there are still quite a number of problems needing to be solved in the process of public cultural service system construction,the most typical of these problems is the equalization of public cultural services.Public library is an institutional arrangement of a country to guarantee citizens' equal and free access to information and knowledge.It is an important part of social culture and education.Therefore,the equalization of public library services is an important part of achieving the equalization of public cultural services,and the equalization of poverty-stricken and non-poverty-stricken areas is the basic requirement of achieving the equalization of Public Library services.The Law of the People's Republic of China on the Guarantee of Public Cultural Services and the Law of the People's Republic of China on Public Libraries clearly stipulate that the development of Public Libraries in poverty-stricken areas should be supported,taking this as an opportunity to accelerate the development of Libraries in poor areas,which is manifested in the remarkable increase of relevant investment.After the increase of investment,whether the service level of Public Libraries in poverty-stricken areas has been improved accordingly has aroused the concern of the whole society.In this context,intensive study of the service level of grass-roots public libraries in poverty-stricken areas has important theoretical and practical guiding significance.As a development province in the central region,there are still 25 poor counties at the national level in Hubei Province by the end of 2017.They are concentrated in Qinba Mountains,Wuling Mountains and Dabie Mountains.This makes Hubei Province as a research individual have considerable representation throughout the country.This research takes the county-level libraries of the most basic public libraries in poverty-stricken areas of Hubei Province as the research object,and evaluates their service level comprehensively.This study considers that a public library needs to satisfy the following three conditions in order to achieve a high level of service supply:first,public libraries should have strong service capabilities,that is,to meet the basic needs of the population being served to the greatest extent;second,the service supply of public libraries should be efficient,that is,to produce as many services as possible within a certain input;Third,the service of public libraries should be high quality,that is,to obtain better satisfaction evaluation from readers.Accordingly,the service level of public libraries is decomposed into three dimensions:service capability,service efficiency and service quality.According to the different characteristics of evaluation content,this study selected different evaluation methods.In the evaluation of service supply capacity of County-level Public Libraries in poverty-stricken areas,this study constructs an evaluation model by using principal component analysis method,and obtains the score of service supply capacity factors of 116 public libraries in Hubei Province through empirical analysis,and makes a comparative study.In the evaluation of service efficiency,this study uses three-stage DEA model and DEA-Malmquist model,respectively.The comprehensive technical efficiency of 67 County-level Public Libraries in Hubei Province and the changes of total factor production index in 2013-2017 were obtained,and a comparative study was carried out.In the aspect of service quality evaluation,this study reconstructed the evaluation scale of audience satisfaction of county public libraries.With the new evaluation scale,our research team conducted a questionnaire survey on audience satisfaction of Public Libraries in 10 counties(including 8 poor counties).On the basis of validity and reliability tests,the survey data were used to complete the survey.Intention comprehensive evaluation,specifically through the AHP method to build a service quality evaluation model,using the fuzzy comprehensive evaluation method to obtain satisfaction score.The specific conclusions are as follows.First,although the growth rate of County-level Public Libraries in poverty-stricken areas of Hubei Province exceeds the average level of the whole province in several important inputs,the service capacity of County-level Public Libraries in poverty-stricken areas still lags behind the average level of the whole province.Secondly,the TE of County-level Public Libraries in Hubei Province is prominently affected by the external environmental factors such as the level of economic development,population and educational development level.After excluding the external environmental factors,The number of county-level libraries at the technological frontier has decreased significantly,the TE has decreased significantly,and the number of increasing returns to scale has increased significantly.The final evaluation results show that TE of County-level Public Libraries in poverty-stricken areas is significantly lower than that in non-poverty areas,and the disparity of TE between the two areas is mainly cased by the difference of SE.When it come to the poverty-concentrated areas,the Dabie Mountains are obviously better than the Wuling Mountains,and the Wuling Mountains are obviously better than the Qinba Mountains.On terms of TFPI,after excluding external environmental factors,the index has risen.The trend of TFPCH and its decomposition index of these County-level Public Libraries in poverty-stricken areas and non-poverty-stricken areas in Hubei Province is basically the same,but the growth rate of poverty-stricken areas is faster than that of non-poverty-stricken areas.In terms of TFPCH and TECHCH,poverty-stricken areas are ahead of non-poverty-stricken areas,but in terms of EFFCH,Poverty-stricken areas lag behind non-poverty-stricken areas,this is mainly caused by the SECH.Thirdly,in the five dimensions of satisfaction evaluation,the importance degree of Library resources,venue environment,service effect,facilities and equipment,librarians are ranked from big to small.The comprehensive evaluation results of the service provided by the readers of County-level Libraries in poverty-stricken areas are satisfactory.In the five dimensions,the comprehensive evaluation results of venue environment,facilities and equipment,librarians are relatively satisfactory,while the collection resources and service effects are general.Based on the above research results,this study puts forward some countermeasures and suggestions to improve the service level of County-level Public Libraries in poverty-stricken areas of Hubei Province.Firstly,we should continue to make reasonable additional investment and tilt towards the Qinba Mountains and library resources.The second is to promote the construction of general libraries and branch libraries in poverty-stricken areas within the county level.Thirdly,we should explore the corporate governance model suitable for the poverty-stricken areas.Thirdly,we should explore the corporate governance model which is suitable for the poverty-stricken areas.Fourth,adjust part of the current operational management system,including Reasonable Planning and Site Selection,Partial Service Outsourcing,adjusting Opening Time and Establish Counterpart assistance mechanism with University Libraries.This study consists of six chapters.The first chapter is an introduction,indicating the origin,significance and method of the study?The second chapter is the theoretical basis of the study.Through theoretical research,the basic methods and contents of evaluation are clarified.The third chapter is the construction of evaluation system,which includes three models:service capability evaluation model,service efficiency evaluation model and service quality evaluation model.Chapter ? is empirical analysis,using the evaluation model constructed in Chapter III to evaluate County-level Public Libraries in poverty-stricken areas of Hubei Province.The fifth chapter is the countermeasures and suggestions.According to the evaluation results and survey findings,it puts forward the strategies to improve the public service level of Public Libraries in poverty-stricken areas.Chapter VI is the summary and Prospect of the study,pointing out the shortcomings of the study and the focus of future research.