A Study On Multi-parties Cooperate Governance Of Universal Type Library In China

The social and public library service is at present underdeveloped in China, as displayed in the general insufficiency of the library service: there are notable imbalances in the development of library services in different regions, especially between urban and rural areas; people don’t have equal opportunities to enjoy the public library services -- there are even no library services in real sense in rural areas. Being affected for a long time by the ideology of the planned economy, the government manages the libraries at all levels and of all kinds in an intensive way, which makes the development of library service fail to match with people’s need. Consequently, in spite of the capital invested by the government in library services as well as the highly-modernized libraries constructed in a large scale, there are still a lot to do for the library service to reach every corner of the country. All of these contribute to the contradiction between the unpopularity of the library service and the demand of popularizing and equalizing the fundamental public service to all people in the country. Hence, this thesis, by introducing the theories of governance from the western countries, attempts to present the connotation of universal library and the connotation of. universal library governance. Through reviewing the development of the library industry in China, the thesis explains the library governance in America, Britain, Japan and other countries whose library service is sufficiently developed and popularized. And then the thesis analyzes the advantages and disadvantages of the two existing modes of library governance in China: government-oriented mode and non-government-oriented mode and demonstrates the necessities of multi-parties governance, which stands for the situation of libraries being co-managed by several entities of government, non-governmental institutions, non-profitable organizations, enterprises, individuals and citizens. After the analysis of the features of this mode of managing and the social background to adapt it, this thesis intends to discuss the mechanisms to implement multi-parties governance of universal type library, including the allocative mechanism of the parties’power and responsibilities to the public affairs of the library, the encouraging mechanism of government’s public policies, the mechanism of laws and regulations of the library, the managing mechanism of library guilds as well as establishing the system of universal type library committees. The innovative merits of this thesis lie in raising the multi-parties cooperative governance of universal type library as well as the operating mechanisms to support it.