Censorship and Chinese libraries

My major as an undergraduate is history. It is interesting to be a history student in a country with a "long and glorious" history. But to be honest, I am not particularly proud of the "5,000 years" of history in China (at least, the number is what is publicized by the government and what is believed by the public). One of the reasons is that I subscribe to post-modern theory. As a result, I think history is construction in nature. Hu Shih, one of the greatest Chinese historians, once said that "history is like a girl's face, subject to makeup as one sees fit." Another reason is that, as what I can see, besides the glorious side in the Chinese history, there is also a dark side, which has been influencing the society until now.

One of the dark events is the burning of books and burying of scholars (I am surprised to know that there is a Wikipedia entry of this event) in the Qin Dynasty, which is the first and is also public seen a great dynasty in Chinese history. This event can be regarded as the starting point of the censorship in China. Here, I don't want to rephrase how censorship went through along the long history in China. But burning book is still happening in China, literally and metaphorically.

In Chinese social media world, people tend to have fierce debate about certain issues. Unfortunately, in some cases, these debates turned into personal attack. Burning the books is one of the ways some radicalists expressing anger toward some specific targets.

(This is a picture someone uploaded to Sina Weibo, because he is angry about the attitude of the author of this book in the debate between Han Han and Fang Shimin, which is a major social issue in China in recent years.)

Another event happened in 2010. In a "academic" conference about reading held in South China University of Technology, some scholars burned books which are seen by them as "garbage books". The issue of garbage books is more complex, because the quality of some of the books published in China is really low. But the point here is that, it's still our culture to burn books rather than to use conversations to solve a problem.

And what is terrible is that, censorship (a broader sense of burning books) is becoming omnipresent and stronger in China.

Michael Anti (a Chinese journalist, political blogger and dissenter) gave a speech about the recent development of censorship in China in TEDGlobal 2012. It's one of the most insightful and accurate descriptions of what is going on inside the Great Fire Wall I have seen. Based on his observation, the government's censorship and people's enlightenment are both growing, and they are having complex interactions in China. It's really interesting to see what will happen in a couple of years.

It should have been the stage for Chinese librarians, unless it isn't.

Last week, Professor Lankes talked about people should not ask "what is the future of libraries" in America, they should ask "what should be the future of libraries and librarians in a democracy". That's kind of the starting point of this blog post. It was this question that reminded me some of the difficulties of being a librarian in China under the omnipresent censorship, which librarians in America may not encounter, or at least these problems may not be as much serious here. On the other hand, just like my last blog post mentioned, people in China like to say "there is no choice" without actually trying anything. I also feel that we should not blame everything on the political system. Even though it's extremely hard to change a political system, we can do something to make everyone's life better, which, little by little, will eventually change the whole country.

Before anything, I want to share a number of stories I came across when I was a librarian in China.

The Chinese government has been banning a lot of books. Banning books are not unique in China, what makes things unique here is that you never know what books are banned. Because banned books are a sensitive topic which is highly invisible to the public even if you can find a way to talk about it in the media. This fact reminds me of a Chinese American historian, Ray Huang's books, in which he talked a lot about the different ways of the Chinese governments and the Western governments in the history. One differences he emphasized is that the Chinese governments has been lacking the ability to manage the country using statistics, thus they can only rely on moral principles and secrecy. In an environment in which even talking about banned books is sensitive, is threatened by politic forces, it's no wonder that nearly all the libraries in China have to take some sort of self-censorship measures. (Sure, another reason is that, like I have mentioned, nearly all the Chinese public libraries belong to and be managed by the government. And Chinese universities are highly bureaucratic too, which makes Chinese academic libraries' situations equally bad.)

In China, publication is strictly controlled. Every book to be published in this country need to be approved by the government, which means that libraries cannot buy unapproved book published in China, because these books hardly exist. For materials published outside the country, there is only one legit channel for libraries to buy these stuff, which is the National Publication Import and Export Corporate. I was a cataloger dealing with English books. There were several times when I cataloged books about really sensitive topics, like Dalai Lama, but in these books there were notes forbidding these books to be public accessible. There was another time when an organization in the US wanted to donate some English books to us, but to get these books, our library had to get permissions from several government departments and ensure that there was no book with "inappropriate" contents.

Another story I can think of is our library's public lectures. Public lectures are one of the most popular projects in our library. There are basically lectures in the library everyday, but lectures held on weekends are especially well-attended. Once upon, one of my colleagues who's in charge of the lecture project had an idea to invite a very famous Taiwanese talk show host, Kevin Tsai (who has the same number of followers in Sina Weibo as Barack Obama in Twitter) to give a lecture in our library. Because Mr. Tsai is also famous for his love of reading, so it'll be a perfect idea not only to promote reading, attract his fans, but also to attract the eye balls of the mass media. This lecture could have been awesome, however, it was rejected by our director. I heard the reasons our director gave to reject this idea were, first, he is a Taiwanese; second, he is a gay, both of which are kind of sensitive. So the director thought even if she approved this idea, the Bureau of Culture in Beijing would definitely rejected it, and may blame her for not rejecting the idea by himself.

Ironically, there is this "great development and flourishing of socialist culture" policy in China recent years. To achieve this "goal", a large amount of money was invested in Chinese public as well as academic libraries. The results? The results are interesting but definitely beyond the scope of this post. But in short, no matter how much money be invested, there is no reason that great libraries can exist in a undemocratic country. (To be noted, there are some libraries in China doing relatively better jobs in their relatively loose environments.)

As a maybe too simplistic map, Chinese librarians should give up their hope to rely on the government. They should be more brave to make changes, they should embrace the people, and they should try to influence the society more rather than remain socially aloof. Those are the first step before any substantial changes to be made.

Librarians and MLIS Students (in China)

My last blog post talked about the idea that you don't have to hold an MLIS degree to become a true librarian. But even after proposing this quite heretic idea, in most of the cases, I do believe it's a really good thing that all the librarians hold an MLIS degree.

When I was a librarian in China, I was actually very surprised that most of the Chinese librarians did not have an MLIS degree (including me for sure). In my library (which is the major public library in Beijing, in case you don't know), the percentage of the librarians with an MLIS degree is lower than 10%. For a number of good academic libraries and top public libraries, the number may be higher. But for most of the public libraries, this number is even lower than us. During the last five years, I found a lot of reasons to explain this phenomenon.

I think the most important reason here is that the library science education in China is largely seen as unrelated with library practices. When I talked to other librarians in the Chinese library community, one comment I heard a lot was that, those library professors did not understand what was going on in libraries. As a result, for library practitioners, the ideas proposed by library science professors are unrealistic in many cases. While on the other hand, for many professors, the developments of most of the libraries are not satisfactory at all. The point here is not which side is right, which side is wrong. They are both right and wrong. I think the point is that, unlike the landscape in the US, there is a lack of communication and trust between the two sides because of some really profound reasons. (In China, you can hear people talking about "profound reasons" a lot. This expression is largely an excuse of people's "having no choice", like an article in Lonely Planet said. So I think I should try to avoid this cynicism, and think deeper about this issue.)

I have not attended any library school in China. As a result, I have little knowledge about what's REALLY going on there. But I do have some connections (which is another expression in the article mentioned above) with library students or people working in library schools. Moreover, my library once had a training session for librarians in cooperation with the library school in Beijing Normal University. I attended this project, and had some really bad experiences.

One the one hand, compared with the curriculum in American library schools, the courses in China are much further away from practices. In the project organized by my library and iSchool, BNU, there was even a course about database. However, the course was taught poorly. The teacher just talked about what elements did a database normally have, and how did they look like, and things like this, without any exercises. I understand the project was only an ad hoc project rather than a real course in the school. However, I still don't think the knowledge taught in a real course had strong connections with what's going on in libraries. This partly explains why many directors in public libraries (again, including the library I used to work) like recruiting students from other professions rather than library schools. One of the comments I heard our director saying a lot was that, librarians need expertise of other professions; what you do in a library is easily to be learnt. Is that so easy? I certainly don't think so. However, this is a popular mindset among library directors in China.

But on the other hand, there are even more problems in the libraries. It's hard to talk about Chinese libraries as a whole, because there are big differences between public libraries, academic libraries and special libraries. There are even greater differences between individual libraries in these categories. But it's a fact that Chinese libraries, especially public libraries, are not doing a good job. They should have done a better job as expected by the public and the professors. But in this case, the "having no choice" expression comes out again. We have some many limitations in terms of management structure and the governance. I don't want to make this issue too complex (which is really complex though). In short, all the Chinese public libraries belong to the government; and in China, the power of the government is so strong and omnipresent, especially in the "culture industry" (in China, the library is categorized into the broader term "culture industry"). The government tends to censor everything in this area. Sometimes, even new ideas come out from librarians, they cannot be implemented because the government is afraid of these ideas; or at least librarian directors think so. Moreover, in most of the cities, like Beijing, public libraries on different levels belong to different levels of governments. For example, the library I used to work, the Public Library of Chinese is part of the Government of Beijing Municipality; while district libraries in Beijing belong to different district governments. It makes extremely hard to harmonize the efforts of different library entities in the same city, and present a uniform brand to the public.

Also, living in Beijing is really hard. Librarians definitely earn much less than people in other professions. So working in Beijing as a librarian is naturally not the best decision an MLIS student can make, who has the ability to take other better paid jobs; not to mention the fact that, many libraries don't like them at all.

Another factor may be that, Chinese libraries (again, especially public libraries) are still publicly seen as the repositories of books. Namely everyone, when they think about libraries, they think about print books. My colleagues used to make a user survey about digital resources. The result of this survey indicates that, many people have no idea what is "digital resource" in the context of a library. This factor, combining the low earning, explains why the social status of librarians is very low in China.

Above is a brief version of this story. For some parts of the story, my narrative is over-simplified. One of these parts is the differences between different libraries in China. There are certainly very good libraries in China, most of which are academic and special ones, like the National Science Library of Chinese Academy of Science. One of the reasons is that, it's a library located in a purely academic institution, thus, there are relatively less institutional barriers. Another reason is that, the director of the library, Dr. Xiaolin Zhang, is a truly creative library leader even around the world. You can never underestimate the library leader's influences on a specific library, especially in China.

I used to think the situations in the US are just opposite to China, that most of the librarians hold an MLIS degree. However, last year, when I read Ken Haycock's book Portable MLIS, I was surprised to find that the percentage of American public librarians who hold an MLIS was much lower than I expected too (though much higher than in China). On the other hand, with the increasing importance of subject librarians, American libraries, especially academic libraries, have a stronger need to have librarians with an MLIS degree as well as a doctor's degree in another field. Again, the real world is too complex to fit into any simple schema.

This blog post is supposed to be the first blog post about some of my thoughts about library management after taking IST 600 Collaborating Effectively in the summer. The point I want to make here is that, when I was in China, I always thought that the librarianship in the US was totally different with the one in China. However, I have know that my previous thought was too simple. For sure, there are a lot of differences, especially in terms of political environment, institutional structure and the culture. But there are also a lot of spaces for improvement in Chinese librarianship. From the strategical level, we should keep the confidence that everything can be better. And in the next few posts, I hope I can cover the topics about how to actually turn things better in China and what I (and everyone) can do to achieve the goals.

On Oakland's people's library

I may have read this piece of news earlier this week, but when I read about the story that the people's library in Oakland was shut down by the police yesterday, I was both excited by the efforts of the volunteers who established the library and was kind of sad about the result.

According to the news, some activists in Oakland took over the building of an abandoned library in the morning of this Monday, which was one of the Carnegie's donations originally established in 1918 and has been closed since 1970s until this Monday.

After occupying the library, the volunteers coming from everywhere filled the library with donated books and erected banners to make it working again. But that's not all. They tried to get the community to engage! According to one of the occupiers' narration:

the organizers also put out a press release, went door-knocking in the neighborhood to inform and invite the community, and built a gardening program that invited youth to come and develop the blighted space.

And they even planned to host a poetry reading program according to the news! In short, they did it, and they did it like awesome librarians.

As I mentioned earlier, I have been reading Professor Lankes' Atlas of New Librarian recently. This event made me excited not only because it is a perfect example of how libraries can help to improve the society in a broader sense, but also because it illustrates what librarians are.

Definitely, librarians are not only those people who work in a library. On the one hand, if one is working in a library in a "wrong" manner, I don't think he is qualified to be a librarian (I am certainly not unbiased toward this issue). On the other hand, as Professor Lankes puts, people with an MLIS degree, no matter where he/she works, he/she can still do the job like a librarian. But here, this story may extend Professor Lankes' statement further. Because there is little information about these activists' professional backgrounds, it's safe to assume that little of them have a MLIS degree. So we can say, even if you do not work in a library nor have an MLIS degree, you can still be a librarian by doing things like this, to sharing information to promote knowledge creation in your community.

Sadly, according to the news, this library was closed by the police last night. But on the other hand, even this library being open for less than a week, we can still expect the little changes it posed to the local community and the society as a whole will turn out to be something great. Just like we can see the influences of Occupy Wall Street Library in this library by its name "people's library", we can expect this library inspire other people to make our society better in the future.

For more information, you can follow Twitter hashtag: #peopleslibrary

ALA Note 1

I have been back from ALA Annual for some days. During these "post-ALA" days, I had a rest (though not very good), started to do all the orientation things in SU (which are so much), had a major dispute about what librarians should be like with some of my Chinese colleagues (which proved my words in the presentation in ALA Annual was right!). And finally, I decided to brag about my trip to Anaheim, California and my experience there. (BTW, I am in Ohio, which is so hot!)

As an ALA Annual newbie, I am extremely excited about this conference. Not only because it's so huge (there seem to be two different versions about the number of participants of this conference, either 20,000 or 16,000), not only because I will give a presentation about RDA (or, Resource Description and Access) in China, not only because there are over 2000 panels to attend, in which I can learn so many things, but the most important reason may be that the conference is so important in the American library land which I am eager to understand and join.

As a first time attendee, I made many mistakes. I mean, yes, I did some homework. For example, I even made business cards (here and here) through Vistaprint just before I went to Anaheim, and got them just before the conference through a friend. But on the other hands, I did a poor job in planning the schedule (I am really regretful for using Google Calendar, which became a mess when I arrived at California from New York; and I failed to realize that ALA Scheduler had this functionality), preparing for my presentation (if I had more time, I could have had the time to visit Disneyland Park, rather than Disney Downtown alone), not to mention the fact that, I haven't fitted in the American librarians' culture for 100% percent yet. 

But as a starting point, I think it's a great experience for me. I learnt a lot, I experienced a lot. I got some friends in the conference, and talked to even more librarians. In a word, this conference is AWESOME!

I attended many panels (even though, sadly, most of them are about cataloging and RDA), got some really interesting ideas about everything. I talked with many great librarians in the conference, including those whose blog I have read in China, like David Lee King, Roy Tennant and Jason Griffey, and those I knew for the first time (like Topher, Shannon, Henry and Erenst). I am especially excited to attend a panel organized by Hacklibschool, which is extremely useful for me to start my Master degree's study. I also attended one of the parties in Tiki Bar in the third day. It was great, even though actually, I have never attended any parties in China (cannot believe that, huh?) and is an introvert (I am trying to work on that), as a result, I guess maybe I was the most aloof person in that party. But I have to say, the party rocks!

Below is a list of all the panels I attended during the conference:

June 22:

ALA 2012 Unconference
NMRT Conference 101
Opening General Session
ALCTS 101

June 23: 

OCLC Dewey Update Breakfast
RDA Update Forum
Conversation Starters: Hacking Library School
MARC Formats Interest Group

June 24:

FRBR Interest Group
LC Bibliographic Framework Transition Update Forum
RDA Worldwide (I am a speaker!)
Discovery Systems: The Promise and the Reality
Cooperative Library and Information Studies Alumni Reunion

June 25:

Current Technology in Libraries: Flash Presentations
The Ultimate Debate: Cloud Computing: Floating or Free Falling?
Building a Library Lab for Emerging Technology -- No Research Programmers Required
Battledecks 2012

I know I missed so many interesting panels this year. But since I will attend ALA Annual 2013. So hope I can have a better experience in Chicago next year.

(to be continued...)

"Book Exchanging Fair" in the Public Library of China

As some of you may have known, I used to work in the Public Library of China for almost 5 years before I came to the US this June. For your information, PLC is the leading public library in Beijing, China.

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.

(Pic from:  http://data.chinaxwcb.com/epaper2012/epaper/d5279/d1b/201204/20956.html )

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.