On Readers' Rights

In recent years, the term of"readers'rights"has become the concern in people's study and life especially after the adoption of reforming and opening to the outside world, the awaking of people's awareness of rights, the increasing call for protecting readers'rights and the popularization of legal knowledge. Being a universally acknowledged basic human rights and democratic right, it is the outcome of the development of democracy and legal system. The full fulfillment and protection of readers'rights lie in the implementation of government's public service policy, the popularization of library spirit and upgrade of Liberian's service philosophy. Due to the backward ideas and lack of institutional protection, the conflict cases arising from disregarding and infringing upon citizens'readers'rights in the library have accumulated and also have caused several influential public service incidents in China. Therefore the exploration of the status quo and its problems of Chinese citizens'readers'rights are conducive to the perfection of public library institution and safeguarding the fulfillment of citizens'readers'rights.Starting from the theories of rights, this dissertation expounds in four parts. In the first part, focusing on the development of readers'rights, the author makes a panoramic study on its origin, development and current situation in the world from the angle of history, and points out the relation between the origin of readers'rights and times background and human developments, and makes a comparative analysis of the features of Chinese-foreign readers'rights; second part on the definition of readers'rights: mainly discusses the concept, subject and character of readers'rights with the aim at analyzing and defining readers'rights in a theoretical perspective.; the third part on the nature of readers'rights: makes an analysis of its contents, origin, nature and justifiability from the jurisprudential angle and elaborates the rationality and necessity of its existence; the fourth part on the limitation of readers'rights: the author suggests that it is essential to limit readers'rights and the principles should be followed taking the cause and manifestation of the conflicts arose from the readers'rights into account; the fifth part on the protection of readers'rights: it elaborates the importance of private rights protection by the public power based on the analysis of the relation between the power held by library and readers'rights and the author puts forward her own opinions and suggestions based on drawing lessons from foreign countries.The originality of this dissertation is as follows: (1) the research topic is unique. as for the studies of this topic, the library circles show more concerns than legal circles, so it is original for the author to study and explore readers'rights from the perspective of jurisprudence; (2) As for the research methods, dominated by the legal theory ,the author elaborates her own views on the solution to the relevant issues of readers'rights combined the normative studies with positive studies and fundamentals of the science of library; (3) in theory, the author thoroughly studies the legal status, contents and limitation of readers'rights; (4) in institution, the author designs the conditions and protective measures for readers'rights, she advocates introducing the advanced management experiences of western libraries in accordance with China's concrete situations and guaranteeing the citizens'availability of knowledge and information through legislation.