It's both very interesting and boring to work as a librarian in China, Chinese public libraries and this specific library. And I certainly hope to share with you many professional experiences I gained from China in this blog or through other channels in the future. In short, working in China as a librarian is just like living in China, for most of the time, you feel many negative feelings, and sometimes, there are good ones.
Most of the Chinese public libraries (basically, Chinese academic libraries are more internationalized and active) are really traditional and without passion and innovation, but sometimes there are some interesting services.
Last week, just after I arrived at Syracuse, I attended the "Academic Librarians 2012 Conference" held in Syracuse University. I listened to the keynotes given by Prof. Dave Lankes and Mr. Roy Tennent, both of which are very inspiring and passionate, even though actually I have listened to some of Prof. Lankes' lectures before.
As I mentioned earlier, Prof. Lankes is one of the reasons I chose Syracuse University (btw, during ALA Annual, many guys I met expressed the same feeling, Prof. Lankes' great, as a result, Syracuse is an awesome choice for library students). In the "New Librarianship" paradigm he proposed, one of the major points is that library should switch from the "lending model" to the "sharing model". This point actually reminds me of a service the Public Library of China developed last year, which is called the "Book Exchanging Fair".
Book Exchanging Fair was first held in the library in Apr. 23rd, 2011 to celebrate the World Book Day (btw, it's weird that there is the entry of "World Book Day" in Wikipedia, however, it was not linked to "April 23rd" page.), which is officially called International Book and Copyright Day, but sometimes is referred as World Book Day. The reason why people chose this date is because it is William Shakespeare's birthday and death date as well as Miguel Cervantes' death date. BTW, the reason I am so familiar with all the story is that it is also my birthday.
The point of Book Exchanging Fair is that people donate books they don't want to possess any more to the library; and in April. 23rd, those people who gave books come to the library to pick up books they are interested which were given by other patrons. And they can only choose as many books as the number of books they donated. There were also some local publishers coming in, donating some of their new titles. And for the books left after the fair, the library in turn donated them to the local libraries run by NGOs.
Based on the "sharing model", it's certainly one of the most interesting event in Chinese public libraries. And it's also well-attended. Actually, earlier this years, it was so well-attended that many patrons had to wait for hours before they could enter the hall. But there are certainly many many problems in this event. The biggest problem for me is that, how to integrate this ad hoc service to more general libraries services to add more value to the library patrons. It's good that library can facilitate sharing between patrons, but it's still not cool if sharing only happens once a year in the library. Another problem is that, it's still book-based. Books are not cool any more, just as indicated by the latest news that Library-a-go-go program lost to eBooks. But eBooks in China is another serious problem to talk about.
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