Preamble

Key Issues in the Innovative Development of Public Libraries During the 15th Five-Year Plan Period
(National Science Library, Chinese Academy of Sciences; Department of Information Resources Management, University of Chinese Academy of Sciences)

Abstract

Facing the 15th Five-Year Plan period and future development, public libraries should address three critical issues by aligning with national strategic needs and their own institutional characteristics: continuously strengthening foundational business operations, further emphasizing innovative development design, and consistently enhancing librarian capacity building. By doing so, public libraries can achieve high-quality development during the 15th Five-Year Plan and beyond. Specifically, public libraries must uphold their distinctive attributes, align with the "Digital China" strategy and the Guidelines on Promoting the Implementation of the National Cultural Digitization Strategy, further implement the Public Library Law of the People's Republic of China, and integrate into local science, technology, economic, and social development frameworks. This approach will demonstrate public libraries' social responsibility and contributions, enhance their influence and value among government, communities, and the public, secure greater support from government and society, and create a virtuous cycle of investment and performance. Consequently, public libraries can play a more significant role and demonstrate greater value during the national and local 15th Five-Year Plan periods and beyond.

Keywords: public libraries; 15th Five-Year Plan; innovative development; strategic planning

1. Continuously Strengthening Foundational Business Operations

Building upon the progress made during the 14th Five-Year Plan period, public libraries must continuously strengthen their foundational business operations during the 15th Five-Year Plan. These foundational operations can only be enhanced, never weakened, yet they must also evolve with the times. While consolidating the basics, libraries should constantly pursue reform and deepen their core business functions.

1.1 Library Facilities and Space Renovation

Library facilities represent the most important physical infrastructure, serving as both the venue and space for library services and as landmarks, calling cards, and symbols of a city's cultural taste, functions, and status. The size, condition, and functional configuration of library buildings directly impact service delivery. Facility considerations include whether they exist at all, their size, whether to expand or renovate, and whether to undertake functional transformations. Libraries with adequate facilities should consider space renovation based on emerging needs, such as creating or developing discussion spaces, maker spaces, reading-aloud spaces, parent-child reading areas, and local cultural exhibition spaces.

1.2 Collection Development

Documentary resources constitute a critical service guarantee for libraries. A library's collection must be not only extensive but also high-quality. Quantity alone is insufficient; collections must match user needs and satisfy diverse demands for research, teaching, and general reading. Libraries should balance print and digital resources (the print-digital balance), fully utilize open access and preprint resources, and organize and reveal resources scientifically to build a rationally structured and efficiently serviceable collection system. Concurrently, libraries must consider collaborative models such as remote storage, intelligent repositories, interlibrary loan, and document delivery. Most importantly, they must transform resource potential into actual service delivery.

1.3 In-Library Services

In-library services represent the foundational service of libraries. Whenever patrons visit, libraries should provide attentive, warm, comprehensive, and welcoming reception and services. In-library services serve as a window to the library and create users' "first impression," influencing the library's service image. Libraries should attract more visitors, strengthen training in service etiquette for librarians, establish good professional images, and enhance librarians' professional qualities and competencies. A relatively complete in-library service system and business standards should be constructed.

1.4 Reading Promotion

Reading promotion has always been an important business function of libraries, reflecting their service characteristics and serving as a crucial means of collection discovery. Against the backdrop of the nation's strong advocacy for nationwide reading, libraries must further strengthen reading promotion efforts. When necessary, they should establish dedicated reading promotion departments with specialized personnel, positions, and funding. By collaborating with relevant social departments, libraries can plan and organize diverse reading promotion activities, actively contributing to "Scholarly China" and fostering nationwide reading habits and social norms through practical actions.

1.5 Organizational Culture

Organizational culture, derived from corporate culture, exists in any organization and encompasses vision and goals, atmosphere and spirit, core competitiveness, and innovative development momentum. Organizational culture formation involves both long-standing traditional factors and the continuous efforts of managers and all staff to refine consensus and build shared values. A strong organizational culture inspires librarians to strive for excellence and generates lasting innovation momentum.

1.6 Librarian Team Building

Among the various factors affecting library development, librarian team building is paramount. Without a qualified librarian team, all other advantages become meaningless. Libraries must strengthen the professionalization of librarians, recruit talent with backgrounds in library and information science and other disciplines, conduct systematic business training programs, and emphasize the cultivation of leading professional backbone staff, particularly department heads. The issue is not merely about quantity but rather about knowledge structure and professional competence. Librarians must be adept at utilizing technological tools to enhance service effectiveness.

2. Further Emphasizing Innovative Development Design

During the 15th Five-Year Plan period, while consolidating foundational business operations, public libraries must continuously seek new breakthrough points and drivers to propel development through greater innovation and demonstrate their value and social contributions.

2.1 Culture-Tourism Integration

Following the establishment of the Ministry of Culture and Tourism in 2018, the overarching principle of "integrate where appropriate and maximize integration" was established. The 20th Party Congress report explicitly proposed the strategic deployment of "promoting deep integration of culture and tourism." This strategy has created a mutually empowering model of "shaping tourism through culture and highlighting culture through tourism." Libraries must identify entry points for culture-tourism integration and strive to become destinations for tourists and the public, such as through exhibitions of rare and valuable collections, displays of local characteristic resources, digital performances of documentary heritage, exhibitions of celebrity manuscripts, and thematic exhibitions.

2.2 Digital and OA Resource Development

As publishing models shift from print to digital (or even purely digital) and library subscription models move toward open access, collection development policies and models must also transform. Libraries must balance print and digital resources, ensure print preservation, increase the proportion of digital resources, serve general in-library patrons, and procure databases to provide network services for remote users through digital libraries. Particular attention should be paid to acquiring and integrating increasingly abundant open access (OA) resources and preprint resources (such as ChinaXiv) into the collection system.

2.3 Smart Library Development

The nation has begun planning smart library development, yet this endeavor remains a long-term and arduous task. If smart libraries were not considered during the 14th Five-Year Plan period, they must be incorporated into planning for the 15th Five-Year Plan. Smart libraries are not merely intelligent libraries; they must be dominated by smart services, provide intelligent knowledge services, and integrate organically into smart cities. While no mature models for smart libraries exist, libraries must strengthen experimentation and exploration to advance from physical libraries and digital libraries to smart libraries.

2.4 Knowledge Services

Libraries must be "service-oriented" and gradually move toward knowledge services and intelligent knowledge services. While providing quality public services, public libraries should actively explore potential and latent needs, continuously expand the breadth of knowledge services, deepen content, and update methods. This includes providing consulting services for government departments, intelligence services for researchers, competitive intelligence for enterprises, and think tank services for decision-makers. Through knowledge service practice, libraries can continuously enhance their status and influence.

2.5 AI Technology Empowerment

AI development is remarkably rapid and seemingly ubiquitous and omnipotent. Libraries must emphasize the introduction of AI technology, delegating to AI what it can do while having librarians focus on what AI cannot do. AI excels at routine, procedural, process-oriented, and transactional work, whereas librarians must engage in more creative, innovative, emotional, and interactive work. AI and librarians should support and complement each other. Ignoring AI development and application will inevitably make libraries incompatible with the times.

2.6 Digital Humanities

The development of digital technology and AI provides new opportunities for public libraries to engage in digital humanities. With its powerful knowledge organization capabilities, digital humanities can not only enable knowledge mining, association, and services from collection documents (particularly ancient books) but also provide digital memory for regional historical development and digitally reconstruct important events in regional development, such as "Beijing Memory" and "Chifeng Memory." Digital humanities holds broad application prospects in public library innovative development.

2.7 Community Culture

Public libraries grow within communities and must integrate closely into social and cultural construction, becoming important driving forces in community cultural development. Public libraries should actively support community public reading, public education, cultural popularization, and civic literacy (such as health literacy), creating citizen study rooms, urban study rooms, and thematic libraries throughout cities, and establishing more libraries or self-service libraries in airports, hotels, and parks. This enhances libraries' affinity with citizens and brings public libraries into people's daily lives.

2.8 Research-Driven Innovation

Libraries have traditionally undervalued research, viewing it as merely related to personal interests (such as professional title evaluation). In future development, librarians without research capabilities will lack innovation capabilities. Research capability means the ability to identify, analyze, and solve problems—the capacity for continuous reflection and innovation. Library innovative development must be built upon a foundation of research. Competition among libraries is essentially competition in librarians' research and innovation capabilities. Research-driven innovation inevitably influences libraries' sustainable innovative development.

3. Continuously Strengthening Librarian Capacity Building

Library innovative development is influenced by many factors, but the most important and fundamental factor is people (librarians). Strong librarian capacity enables better library innovation. Success depends on human effort. Without a capable librarian team, library innovative development remains a castle in the air.

3.1 Leadership Talent Team Building

In libraries, leadership talent refers to directors, deputy directors for business, deputy directors for technology, and department heads. Leadership talent is the soul of the library. With a team of leaders, the entire librarian workforce becomes energized and can drive overall staff development. Leadership talent can be recruited, introduced, or cultivated. Libraries must be adept at identifying leadership talent and providing them with platforms. Fundamentally, leadership talent emerges through innovative development and grows through competition. Leadership is not merely about titles, honors, or accolades but about innovative capacity.

3.2 Providing Effective Incentives for Talent

Management theory holds that people need motivation. Library managers must provide opportunities for frontline business and management backbone staff to demonstrate their abilities while ensuring appropriate rewards, both material and spiritual. Incentive measures are diverse and should be adapted to local conditions and capabilities. Librarians (talent) who work selflessly deserve greater consideration, creating a fair competitive and innovation-oriented cultural atmosphere. Egalitarianism only undermines the ecosystem for library innovative development.

3.3 Emphasizing Research and Innovation Capacity Development

Research and innovation capacity is neither innate nor developed overnight. Individuals with such capacity must first receive rigorous scientific training, possessing scientific thinking, critical spirit, academic integrity, innovation awareness, and mastery of rigorous scientific research methods and techniques. Libraries should recruit more master's and doctoral graduates with backgrounds in library and information science and scientific research, actively undertake library-level and higher-level research projects, and connect these with the library's developmental issues and practical needs.

3.4 Cultivating Expert Librarians

The strength of a librarian team lies not in its size but in the number of expert librarians. Expert librarians are creative and innovative, experienced, wise, and adept at solving complex problems in library development and user needs. Expert status is not determined by professional rank but by high recognition from users and peers as an "expert." With compressed staffing, expert librarians become even more precious. Only with a cohort of expert librarians can libraries gain greater status and earn trust and recognition from users and society.

Facing the 15th Five-Year Plan and future development, each library's tasks and implementation paths may differ. Most importantly, based on analysis of the broader environment and user needs, libraries must seize development opportunities, identify key issues requiring innovative development during the 15th Five-Year Plan period, adapt to changes, anchor strategic goals, actively plan for development, prioritize innovation layout, and continuously seek breakthroughs. By contributing to social development, libraries can achieve their own high-quality development, creating resonance and fostering a more favorable development ecosystem.

(Note: This article will be published in the third volume of Libraries and Lifelong Learning by the Capital Library in 2025)