Preamble

Library Science is a Discipline Centered on People
Zhang Yongcheng¹, Hao Dongdong², Song Yipin¹, Wang Jiamu¹
(1. Shandong University Business School, Weihai, Shandong 264209; 2. Harbin Institute of Technology (Weihai) Library, Weihai, Shandong 264209)

Abstract: Library science is essentially library management—a discipline centered on people. Librarians constitute the sole subject and core object of library management, and assumptions about human nature represent the first principle of library science. Readers are the exclusive research subject on the demand side, the key creators of the library, and the sole measure for service evaluation. They participate in library governance and management, existing in a relationship of mutual dependence, co-creation, value reinforcement, and integration with librarians, driving joint evolution. As an intermediary variable connecting librarians and readers, service is an undertaking with librarians and readers as dual axes. Service innovation represents the unity of librarian creativity and reader demand individuality, while service operation is a process of frequent interaction, iterative optimization, and organic coupling between librarian manufacturing capacity and reader demand commonality. In the transition from librarian creativity to manufacturing, or from reader demand individuality to commonality, services become increasingly standardized, shifting from meeting the individual needs of a few readers to satisfying the standardized needs of a broader readership.

Keywords: Library science; Librarians; Readers; Service

1 Introduction

Chinese library science theory has traversed stages of belated origin, persistent hesitation, difficult initiation, prolonged reconstruction, breakthrough amidst confusion, and brilliance in the new century [1]. Particularly after China's accession to the WTO, alongside rapid economic and higher education development, China's library science theoretical system has matured, library science education has flourished, and the library profession has thrived. However, for years, domestic theoretical circles have seemingly rejected the managerial nature of library science. Whether the parent discipline—library, information, and archive management, or information resource management—belongs to a particular disciplinary category or stands as an independent field remains unsettled. The strategic coordinates of Chinese library science's research object have continuously drifted, sometimes focusing on the library organization itself, sometimes on the application of new social technologies within libraries. This has resulted in unclear disciplinary positioning, questionable research objects, absent foundational theories, missing meta-theories, and undefined first principles. Consequently, people have not been placed at the center of library science's strategic coordinates, neglecting management's core value in library science research and leaving the theoretical foundation unstable.

An unstable foundation leads to collapse. For Chinese library science, the greatest challenge may not be the increasing disregard for humanities disciplines (including library science), nor the impact of digital-intelligent trends or the renaming of the first-level discipline from library, information, and archive management to information resource management. Rather, the primary task is to place library science theoretical research on the correct track by clarifying its disciplinary attributes, research objects and content, enriching research methods, perfecting its knowledge system, consolidating the legitimacy of its theoretical foundation, and promoting the sustained and healthy development of Chinese library science.

2.1 From Library Practice Perspective, Library Work is Management-Centered

Libraries play a vital role in knowledge and information dissemination, technological development, and civilizational advancement. Yet resources are externally sourced, technology is largely imported, and spaces are created by parent institutions. Libraries themselves do not produce any concrete physical artifacts. Their value lies in providing needed services to readers through systematic work such as acquisition, classification, cataloging, collection, and circulation. All services—whether operational or innovative—are built upon management and begin and end with people. Management permeates all areas and levels of library work, becoming a foundational, integrative, and coordinating function that creates appropriate organizational order: order among people, among things, and among tasks. Through this, libraries can: (1) optimize allocation and effective utilization of resources, space, technology, and librarians under given service technology and management levels; (2) discover, cultivate, stimulate, and release librarian creativity to drive service innovation; and (3) attract external talent, useful resources, and advanced technology [2].

Service capacity and performance are directly tied to the integration and utilization of resources, technology, and space. Therefore, the essence or core basis of library organization is service capacity, particularly service innovation capacity. Management acts as an "amplifier" of library service capacity: without management, resources, technology, and space within libraries remain scattered and cannot form effective services; without management, no synergy exists, and library service capacity cannot be amplified, resulting in "1+1=2" and negating the need for library organizations; without management, librarian creativity cannot be effectively stimulated and released, preventing service innovation and continuous improvement; without management, external talent, resources, and technology cannot be absorbed into libraries, hindering continuous optimization of organizational elements and effective service delivery.

Multiple factors account for the emergence of library science, with the core reason being the importance of libraries and their work [2]. Through mutual promotion between theoretical research and organizational practice, library science and the library profession continuously develop and prosper. As Butler stated, any understanding of society must include an explanation of libraries as a fundamental social element and their role in public life, making library science applicable whenever related phenomena are discussed in social sciences [3]. American library science and librarianship, though less ancient than Europe's, achieved greater development by adopting a pragmatic approach: marketizing library services, corporatizing library management, and professionalizing librarians. In essence, if library work is done well and libraries become indispensable, library science gains (practical) legitimacy. Conversely, if libraries lack value, library science loses its (practical) foundation. In an era of universal higher education, increasing importance of learning, and pervasive noise, libraries—as convergence points for resources, information, knowledge, and culture—are more important than ever. Whether for resource access, learning, communication, leisure, or simply finding a familiar, tranquil, personal, and free space, people's hearts increasingly yearn for what should rightfully be a "temple-like" library.

2.2 From Library Intellectual History Perspective, the Research Object Should Be "Management Theory"

Definitions are brief expressions of essential nature. Schrettinger defined library science as the sum total of all propositions required for the purpose of library arrangement. This definition remains appropriate as it explains three important aspects: (1) library science research should be based in library organizations, rooted in the particularities of libraries and their operations; (2) library science studies library arrangement, not merely book arrangement or libraries themselves; and (3) library science research content is complex, comprising the sum of all propositions about library arrangement. From today's perspective, Schrettinger's "arrangement theory" is essentially "management theory" aimed at effective acquisition, optimal allocation, and best utilization of book resources. British scholars Panizzi and Edwards also represented "management theory," as did the Columbia College Library School, whose mission was to train professional library managers with curricula emphasizing library business management. "Management theory" reached its peak with Dewey's "library economy" and achieved brilliant success in practice. Chinese and American library science share common origins [4]: American libraries trained Chinese pioneers like Dai Zhixian and Hong Youfeng, early curricula at Boone Library School followed American models, and China's early library science development also embraced "management theory." Though Hong Youfeng's Library Organization and Management contains no explicit mention of "management" [5], it essentially addresses library management, with cataloging, shelf design, and book placement all aiming to "keep things in perfect order" [6].

The "library theory" or "institution theory" treats the library as library science's sole research object. Liu Guojun's "element theory" treats specific library components as research objects [7], essentially constituting "institution theory." Karlstedt's "knowledge/resource/information theory" interprets libraries from these perspectives, viewing them as knowledge/resource/information organizations, collections, or communities—merely a variant of "institution theory." "Career theory," "contradiction theory," and "law theory" fail to reveal the particularity or essential attributes of library science's research object; rather, they represent extensions of "institution theory," still treating libraries as the sole research object. Lai Maosheng argued that disciplinary names should accurately reflect basic nature or essential attributes while concisely revealing research problems and clearly distinguishing the discipline from related fields [8]. "Library science" easily leads to the literal interpretation that it is merely the study of libraries, mistakenly assuming libraries themselves are the research object. While libraries are indeed one research object, treating the library organization as the sole research object is self-limiting, neglecting human agency, centrality, creativity, and purposefulness, narrowing and solidifying the discipline's research domain, restricting its development and imagination, and forfeiting its value-creating attributes.

Abbot's "technology theory" emphasizes technology's central role in library science research. While library science should certainly attend to new technologies and their applications, technology is merely part of applied research—not its core, let alone the entirety of library science's research object. "Technology theory" neglects the foundational and central position of theoretical research, putting the cart before the horse, and essentially represents tool-subject theory, a specific manifestation of fetishism.

2.3 From Parent Discipline Perspective, Library Science Should Belong to Management

Dewey, Ranganathan, and Butler considered library science a social science. However, whether library science belongs to a specific disciplinary category or whether library, information, and archive management constitutes its own category remains undetermined. Library, information, and archive management is management based on libraries, information, and archives—management of libraries, information, and archives. Unlike business management, it relies on libraries, information, and archives as its carriers, with correspondingly different management methods and approaches. As part of information management, information resource management concerns how to manage information resources for effective acquisition, optimal allocation, and full utilization—essentially an expanded version of traditional "book management," extending from book resources to general information resources. The main changes in renaming the first-level discipline from library, information, and archive management to information resource management include: (1) expanding the research object from libraries, information, and archives to general organizations, removing disciplinary characteristics; and (2) narrowing research content from managing people (librarians), tasks (information activities), and things (information resources) to managing things exclusively, eliminating the more important management of people and tasks. Against a backdrop of disciplinary cancellation, renaming, establishment, and reorganization, changing library, information, and archive management to information resource management is worse than leaving it unchanged—better to leave this "formal issue" to a wiser future.

Lai Maosheng implicitly suggested that information resource management basically belongs to management [9], implying it might "basically not" belong to management. The key issue may lie in the standard of "basically." The Ministry of Education's Undergraduate Major Catalogue (2025) explicitly places "library, information, and archive management" under the management discipline category, which includes not only library science and archival science but also information resource management. Library science professional degrees typically confer management degrees. Library science also shares characteristics with other management disciplines: interdisciplinarity, applicability, and context-dependency. Nearly all introductory library science books in China interpret library science's research object through a management lens, and increasing academic papers explore library strategy, culture, marketing, customer relationship management, and resource vendor management. Whether library, information, and archive management or information management/information resource management, these are undoubtedly studies of (organizational) management problems and should belong to management. Regrettably, for decades, domestic library science has remained outside management, never placing people at the center of library science research nor making management its (most) core theme.

Some schools place library science under information management or information science, or even as independent departments, either due to strong disciplinary strength (e.g., A-level evaluation) or to enhance technological application and value-creation attributes to secure more resources and ensure adequate attention and better development. Meanwhile, through "informatization" reforms, they promote the "management engineering" or "information engineering" of library science, transforming traditional "knowledge warehouse keepers and porters" into "information analysts and decision participants" to enhance disciplinary status, discourse power, and legitimacy in the digital-intelligent context that favors science over humanities. The prominent problem is the failure to reflect libraries' and library management's distinctive characteristics.

3.1 Classification by Research Content Attributes

Library science's research object encompasses not merely libraries, nor merely book management or technology application, but rather libraries, management subjects, management itself, management objects, and the management of all people, things, and tasks within libraries. In an open context, management overflows library organizations to extend to stakeholders like resource suppliers and readers [2]. By research content attributes, library science includes theoretical and applied content, as shown in Figure 1 [FIGURE:1].

Figure 1 Library Science Research Content

Theoretical content comprises three aspects: (1) What it is—connotation, reflecting the essence or unique attributes of a specific research object. For example, what is a library? Some say it replaces private collections, others say it replaces market services, some view it as a team service model, while others consider it a service transformation institution. (2) What constitutes it—extension, referring to the sum or scope of components of a specific research object, which has an inverse relationship with connotation. For example, libraries include elements like books and periodicals, technology, space, service equipment, librarians, functional systems, vision, mission, and values. (3) Why it is—the reasons or basis for the aforementioned "what it is" and "what constitutes it." Theoretical content belongs to the "metaphysical" or "Dao" level—pure, free, knowledge-for-its-own-sake scholarship without utilitarianism or purposefulness. It forms the foundation and core of library science; only with a solid core can the discipline's foundation be consolidated. Library science constituted by theoretical content is theoretical library science.

Applied content explores how theory transforms into practice, primarily addressing what should be done and how it should be done—both essentially normative questions about library decision-making (including factual and value decisions) to solve problems of doing the right things (direction) and doing things right (methods) in library practice. The practical question of how it is done must be resolved in practice according to specific contexts. What should be done depends mainly on library values (values being perspectives on or attitudes toward value, a concrete manifestation of cognitive ability or level)—that is, what is valuable, focusing on economic or social benefit feasibility analysis, as opposed to what lacks value. How it should be done depends mainly on library ethics—what is reasonable and appropriate, focusing on technical feasibility analysis, as opposed to what is inappropriate or even illegal. Applied content belongs to the "form," "technique," and "transformation" levels, with potential utilitarianism, value-orientation, and purposefulness, making it impure, unfree, knowledge-for-application scholarship. Library science constituted by applied content is applied library science.

3.2.1 Library Operations Management

Library operations management is a discipline studying service operations management. In reality, this "task" is people-centered, targeting efficiency, cost, and quality as phased material or materialized service outputs to meet standardized needs of more readers and achieve good social benefits.

Library operations management assumes a short-term, deterministic context, with service operations as its work content, viewing resources or technology as the primary productive force of services. It advocates objectivism and objective value theory, upholds collective rationality, and adopts a "bystander" perspective from which managers examine people and affairs from the library's overall interests. It practices consequentialist thinking, constructing optimal goals and plans under certain conditions and retroactively deriving subsequent service processes. It neglects individual rationality and sensibility, suppressing individual independence, autonomy, freedom, and creativity; librarians are merely means to achieve library goals, requiring only compliance. It emphasizes manager management and organizational functional management, advocating scientific management with procedural, standardized, and normalized management processes, top-down power, and centralized structures where managers are "buck-passers." It values professional or executive ability, focusing on doing things right, promoting craftsman spirit, attending to details, refinement, and subtle equilibrium, seeking static efficiency under "circular flows." Its purpose lies primarily in constructing artificial order and seeking integration effects to optimize allocation and effective utilization of resources, technology, space, and librarians under given service technology and management conditions.

3.2.2 Library Innovation Management

Only by recognizing, respecting, and releasing individual value can all other values be created. Library innovation management is a discipline studying service innovation management. Literally, it also concerns "tasks," but to achieve service innovation, librarians must be treated as ends in themselves, always centered on librarians, discovering, cultivating, stimulating, and releasing their creativity to transform it into creative power and service innovation output. Library innovation management is essentially a discipline about people and a free discipline. Through rational reflection on librarians' human nature, needs, value, and other fundamental issues, it explores effective approaches to solving service innovation challenges. This requires no human nature assumptions incompatible with librarians' freedom, creativity, and complex needs, nor "synchronization" of heterogeneous dimensions like endowments, needs, and motivations.

Library innovation management assumes a long-term, uncertain context, with service innovation as its work content, viewing people as the primary creative force of services. It advocates subjectivism and subjective value theory, upholds individual sensibility, and values librarians' intuition, curiosity, imagination, self-expression, and self-development potential, believing librarians should heed their inner voice rather than "bystander" designs. It focuses on doing the right things, emphasizing the importance of foresight built on information ability, cognitive ability, logical thinking, and imagination, promoting innovative spirit, seeking creative destruction and dynamic efficiency that breaks "circular flows." It practices causal thinking, advocates humanistic management, creates spontaneous order and improves innovation mechanisms, and ignites librarians' innovation passion. Power flows bottom-up, structures are decentralized, and managers are "fall guys" bearing more responsibility to reduce burdens on librarians, enabling them to continuously improve themselves through "learning by doing" and "doing by learning," overcoming various service innovation obstacles. Its management value lies primarily in amplification effects—discovering, cultivating, stimulating, and releasing librarian creativity.

3.3.1 Research Priorities

Developing library science requires both proactive enrichment and improvement of its knowledge system from different perspectives and reflective correction to solidify its theoretical foundation. Although scholars like Dewey and Butler called for theoretical research to consolidate library science's theoretical system, enhance disciplinary legitimacy, and achieve disciplinary advancement, library science's interdisciplinary, applied, and context-dependent nature collectively determines that it is a "downstream discipline" closely integrated with practice, whose theoretical nature is not particularly strong. Library science research need not overemphasize theoretical "loftiness"; it only needs to be rooted in libraries' particularities, always placing people at the center of library science research, grounded in library science's meta-theory—management principles, and attentive to applications of emerging technologies like AI in libraries. Only by synergistically advancing in three aspects—people, management, and technology application—can it identify, analyze, and solve problems well, approach the "truth" of library science, and properly address its interdisciplinary, applied, and context-dependent nature, yielding real flowers and genuine, abundant fruit.

Future research priorities in library science include: (1) As an interdisciplinary field with genes from management, economics, psychology, philosophy, and computer applications, library science must trace its origins to clarify meta-knowledge and meta-theory, consolidating its theoretical cornerstone, while overcoming single-discipline limitations through broad debate, panoramic examination, and cross-validation for systematic understanding. Future theoretical research should seek breakthroughs in interdisciplinary domains. (2) As an applied discipline—most domestic and international literature addresses applications, such as Schrettinger's Textbook of Library Science and Overview of Library Science, Ranganathan's Five Laws of Library Science, and Hong Youfeng's Library Organization and Management—applied content is the focus of library science research. Future applied research should embrace digital-intelligent trends, seeking breakthroughs in digital-intelligent technology applications to guide library practice. However, some digital-intelligent technologies (e.g., AI) remain immature, and different libraries have different circumstances; rushing headlong into adoption will inevitably lead to chaos and dispersion—the lessons are recent. (3) As a contextual science, library science research must closely connect with practice, combining internal and external library contexts and management subject/object contexts. Future theoretical and applied research should explore differences and connections between library management/governance and other organizations' management, considering libraries' public welfare nature, weak inter-library competition, librarian characteristics, reader characteristics, and the particularity of reader-library relationships.

3.3.2 Research Paradigms

Butler emphasized the scientism paradigm in library science research, advocating scientific spirit and methods to enhance disciplinary scientificity and theoretical legitimacy, attempting cross-validation from sociology, psychology, history, and philosophy [10]. For library service operations, where environments and research objects are relatively certain, research scientificity can certainly be enhanced through hypothesis, modeling, and quantitative analysis, and AI tools can be used to summarize historical data and seek optimal solutions under certain conditions to improve service efficiency, reduce costs, and enhance quality.

However, for uncertain environments, uncertain service innovation work, and uncertain librarians, emphasizing quantitative analysis based on mathematical methods often proves impractical: first, highly personalized inner matters like human needs, desires, and motivations are unsuitable for quantitative assessment; second, library internal and external environments, service innovation work, and librarian psychological activities are full of uncertainty, making mathematical models often unreliable; third, inductive methods based on general sample data may not suit individual librarians. Emphasizing research paradigm scientificity while divorcing it from specific contexts can lead to the opposite of science, becoming unscientific and anti-scientific. Reference to Hayek's The Counter-Revolution of Science: Studies on the Abuse of Reason suggests that lessons from "mainstream economics" research paradigms should be fully absorbed. In other words, library science research requires not only scientism but also humanism paradigms. In service innovation research, experimental and deductive methods can be used, starting from individualistic methodology, recognizing and respecting individual dignity and value, viewing people as the measure of all things, analyzing individual psychological needs, value orientations, and behavioral motivations, and exploring effective methods and approaches to stimulate and release librarian creativity.

4 Librarians

Library science is essentially library management science—the study of library management [2]. The subject of library management is people, and the object is primarily people as well. The integration, amplification, and aggregation effects of management are essentially behavioral effects of people. Only by managing people well can things (resources, space, technology), tasks (services), and relationships with external stakeholders be well managed. Therefore, the core of library management is the management of librarians.

4.1 Human Nature Structure

Human nature is a complex and variable structural issue, including characteristics like selfishness, goodness and evil, complex needs, rationality and sensibility, freedom, and creativity. Human nature is relatively obscure, so closely related and more concrete needs are often used to represent it. In management, assumptions like economic person, social person, self-actualizing person, and complex person all interpret or define human nature from the perspective of needs. (1) Selfishness. Human nature is selfish; selfishness is a basic human trait. Seeking private gain, ignoring or denying one's greed, ignorance, and mistakes, overestimating oneself and underestimating others—these are universal human traits and objective realities. Smith championed selfish human nature, arguing that self-interest is the basic motive of human behavior. Yet self-interest and altruism are not necessarily contradictory; selfishness can serve good. Almost all human interactions are guided by an invisible hand, requiring both self-benefit and other-benefit. As Kazuo Inamori stated, self-interest ensures survival, altruism ensures longevity; altruism is advanced self-interest [11]. (2) Goodness and Evil. Human nature contains both good and evil, two sides of the same coin, with evil as the basic plane. Christianity's "original sin" is built upon an evil human nature assumption. Therefore, institutions and systems are needed to suppress evil and promote good, with evil suppression as the prerequisite and bottom line, upon which good promotion is sought. (3) Complex Needs. Whether "economic animal," "social animal," or "political animal," all refer to human needs. People have not only economic needs but also social, esteem, power, self-achievement, and surpassing-others needs. Human needs are complex and variable, with economic needs being the most basic and important for ordinary people. Without satisfaction of economic needs, other needs easily become castles in the air. Yet beyond economic needs, a minority differs, pursuing higher-level needs like self-achievement and surpassing others. (4) Rationality and Sensibility. Rationality and sensibility are two related forms of human consciousness and two different approaches to discovering, analyzing, and solving problems. Ontologically, they are based on the connection between "body" and "mind." Rationality corresponds to certainty, while uncertainty must rely on sensibility. Rationality determines the lower limit of service innovation, sensibility determines its upper limit, and both jointly determine the process and results of service innovation. (5) Freedom. Human character is freedom; without people there is no freedom, and without freedom there is no people—freedom is people themselves. Freedom is the most effective way to solve uncertain problems; it breeds imagination and promotes competition and survival of the fittest. All service innovation is built upon freedom; without freedom, librarians' potential creativity cannot transform into actual creative power. (6) Manufacturing and Creativity. Most ordinary people prefer tradition, refining and polishing it, while only a few courageously break the status quo and embrace change. Manufacturing (i.e., craftsman spirit, from 1 to 1'...from N to N') is the psychological and behavioral inertia librarians exhibit in maintaining and focusing on tradition. After clearly grasping the underlying logic of services through repeated interaction with readers, it drives standardization of service products, technology, processes, management, and library organizations to meet readers' universal or common needs. Creativity (i.e., innovative spirit, from 0 to 1 or from 1 to N) is the psychological and behavioral tendency of a minority of librarians to embrace uncertainty, break tradition, and disrupt the status quo, driving creative destruction of service technology and products to meet the individual needs of leading readers (early adopters or rejecters). Sartre argued that human existence creates itself through free choice, that people must create value for their own existence [12]. Creativity is a noble human trait, the core characteristic of innovative librarians, and their fundamental expression of refusing mediocrity and being different. Creative need is a high-level need, proving one's uniqueness and value by demonstrating creative talent. Theoretically, all librarians have creativity, unique endowments, interests, specialties, curiosity, and imagination—all possessing the material cause for creation. In reality, discovering and cultivating creative endowments requires continuous trial and error, error tolerance, and leaders with discerning eyes. Stimulating and releasing creativity requires transformational leadership, appropriate functional systems, and relaxed organizational atmospheres.

4.2 Human Nature Assumptions

Reasonable assumptions, reasoning processes, and conclusions constitute complete scientific forms, yet they often presuppose directly certain or self-evident ultimate premises. In other words, every discipline has self-evident first questions or meta-questions, and library science is no exception. Library management objects include people, things, and tasks; therefore, human nature, thing nature, and task nature (service characteristics) are the logical origins of library management. Thing nature is certain, human nature is complex and variable, and task nature depends on librarian human nature and reader demand characteristics, essentially being a concrete manifestation of human nature. Only by understanding human nature can task nature be understood. Moreover, people are the core management object, the purpose of all activities, and the sole measure of all things. Thus, assumptions about librarians' human nature constitute library science's first principle. Following the logical thread of human nature → needs → values → ethics → choice/decision → action/execution, human behavior is constrained by ethics, values, needs, and human nature. Following first principles, all management measure designs must be based on reasonable human nature assumptions; any management measures contrary to human nature will be counteracted by it. Respecting human nature means respecting objectivity and upholding rationality.

The human nature assumptions of library operations management are: (1) it focuses on standardized people or the common parts of human nature. Librarians are viewed as "economic animals," economic beings, or "tool beings"—means rather than ends—revolving around resources and technology, which are considered the primary productive forces of services; (2) it focuses on the short term. Library internal and external environments are relatively certain, with sufficient information for all; (3) library managers are perfectly rational and "smartest," following optimal principles in service operations decisions under full information, capable of designing all optimal goals and plans for the library. From a holistic methodology, it seeks to improve service efficiency, reduce costs, and enhance quality, meeting broader readers' standardized needs through scaled manufacturing services, while management measures mainly manifest as "carrot and stick," combining reward and punishment.

The human nature assumptions of library innovation management are: (1) it focuses on individual people, attending to both common and individual parts of human nature. People are the primary creative force of services. From an individualistic methodology, people are treated as ends rather than mere means, valuing individual independence, autonomy, freedom, and unique endowments; (2) librarians have not only economic needs but also needs for self-achievement, self-transcendence, and surpassing others through creative work; (3) it focuses on the long term. Internal and external environments and service innovation work are uncertain, with insufficient information for all; (4) due to environmental uncertainty, service innovation complexity, and limited human cognition, all librarians, including managers, are boundedly rational. Service innovation decisions are basically made by librarians themselves. With incomplete information and insufficient rationality, decisions require combining rationality and sensibility, following satisficing principles, making optimal goals and plans unattainable. Managers' work focuses on planning library strategy, creating good service innovation mechanisms, and providing logistical support for service innovation.

4.3 Basic Competencies

Wu Jianzhong argued that library science research should transform from "primarily solving collection-use contradictions" to a "people-oriented" philosophy [1], shifting from early resource- and service-centered approaches to people-centered ones. All services, including "finding books," require librarians to complete. All problems within libraries are fundamentally human problems; only when human problems are solved can resource and service problems be fundamentally resolved. As Drucker stated, people deserve more attention than any concept [13]. Regarding librarian competencies, character is always first; integrity and kindness are the only indispensable conditions for all librarians (especially library leaders). Schrettinger believed that graduates from library schools would be able to build libraries that are proper, comfortable, and practical [14]. Yet an educated person, even highly educated or a scholar, cannot become a librarian without specialized learning, preparation, and practice [15].

Ranganathan held that every librarian should be enthusiastic, considerate, humble, promptly available to readers, and a psychologist skilled at reading readers' minds and getting along with difficult patrons [16]. Dewey believed librarians are no longer custodians but active and enterprising educational forces, like signposts always pointing the way for others. Butler argued that librarians should study not only sociology and psychology but also history, especially the history of knowledge recorded in books and library history [17]. Schrettinger, Ranganathan, Dewey, and Butler all emphasized the necessity of librarian professionalization and specialized education, believing erudition is a prerequisite for librarianship, with breadth of knowledge being more important than specialized knowledge. Austin Dobson's epitaph for Richard Garnett, one of the last century's most outstanding librarians, perfectly诠释了 the qualities a true librarian should possess: "His learning was more vast than any man's; he loved all learning, and to every seeker he was as a brother" [18]. However, it must be said that by Schrettinger, Ranganathan, Dewey, and Butler's standards, some librarians (especially leaders) still have considerable room for improvement in basic competencies.

Overall, the service capacity and standards of domestic library practice can hardly provide strong practical legitimacy for library science.

5.1 Reader Sovereignty

Schrettinger believed that the library's purpose is to quickly satisfy all readers' literature needs [19]. Ranganathan's first four laws—"Books are for use," "Every reader his book," "Every book its reader," and "Save the time of the reader"—place readers at the center, while the fifth law, "A library is a growing organism," emphasizes that libraries must continuously innovate to meet readers' changing needs [20]. However, early book resources were too scarce and important. As Schrettinger stated, a library is a vast collection of books, and library science's highest principle is to find needed books as quickly as possible [21]—the ultimate goal and destination of all library and library science activities, frontstage and backstage, and the eternal driving force for library profession and disciplinary development [22]. Therefore, in early libraries, book resources occupied the core position, and librarians sought to acquire more useful books. In the service supply-demand system, with libraries monopolizing book resources, libraries usually held dominant positions despite verbally proclaiming "readers first."

With the deep-rooted reader-first concept, widespread application of emerging technologies, and enhanced dispersion, availability, and accessibility of books and periodicals, the service supply-demand system has generally shifted from shortage to surplus, transforming library sovereignty into de facto reader sovereignty. The views of "readers first" and "everything for readers" cannot remain mere slogans but must permeate every library link [23]. All library work, whether service innovation or operations, must revolve around readers, accepting their guidance, command, evaluation, assessment, and final testing. Readers not only directly determine final service value but also indirectly determine service element value; they determine service types and quantities, and ultimately service quality, efficiency, and cost. Reader satisfaction has become a necessary condition for libraries' market legitimacy. Only when readers recognize services can the entire service process continue to occur, unfold, and cycle, giving meaning to all service links and earning recognition and returns for stakeholder participation. Reader centrism acknowledges readers' ultimate referee status in the service supply-demand system; readers can "vote with their hands or feet," ultimately promoting front-end resource reallocation and service activity optimization. For example, if a librarian fails to perform their duties properly, they are usually punished because if the library doesn't punish them, readers will ultimately punish the library until it is eliminated.

If we compare libraries to ships with directors as helmsmen, readers are the shipowners who set the direction. Readers ultimately determine what libraries are and what they will become. However, it must be said that absolute reader orientation inevitably pushes libraries toward dead ends: (1) Some reader behaviors are incorrect; libraries should be skilled at guiding, regulating, correcting, and preventing uncivilized behaviors like book theft, smoking, and seat occupation while respecting readers' rights. (2) Readers are typically shortsighted and self-interested, caring only about front-end services and "cost-performance ratio," not service back-ends or the hardships libraries endure to provide services. (3) Service innovation usually does not stem from reader demand surveys but depends on visionary librarians' intuition, curiosity, acuity, and imagination. Service operations improvements in efficiency, cost, and quality directly result from librarians' craftsman spirit, not readers' specific guidance. (4) Libraries must consider not only reader needs but also other stakeholders' or creators' demands, since libraries are not created by readers alone. Libraries' value does not lie in completely or blindly catering to readers but importantly in improving libraries' professionalism, capacity, taste, and status, helping readers screen, identify, and recommend, making more rational and valuable analyses and judgments to effectively meet broader needs. More importantly, libraries must foresee and lead the future, creating new services, new demands, and new value.

5.2 Reader Demand Characteristics

Reader demand is the starting and ending point of services. Both service innovation and operations must accurately understand readers' intentions, precisely meet their needs, and continuously feedback and iteratively optimize. Reader demand characteristics are the first principle of services, including cognition, preference, value, and experience. Cognition determines readers' understanding of needs and need levels; preference is readers' own likes or value tendencies; value is the explicit and implicit benefits readers obtain after receiving services; experience is the sense of gain and satisfaction throughout the service process. Within the entire demand characteristic structure exist both common and individual parts. Demand commonality addresses standardized needs of many readers—the broader and stronger the commonality, the higher the standardization. Demand individuality is unique, distinctive need attributes; different readers often exhibit different demand traits. If an individual need can lead the future and evolve into broader common need, libraries should certainly attempt breakthrough and incremental service innovation, advancing service refinement and standardization while meeting individual needs,设法 transforming individual needs into common needs.

6 Service Intermediary

Ranganathan emphasized libraries' service functions in The Five Laws of Library Science. Butler considered libraries a social device for transplanting this memory into individual consciousness [24]. Libraries are physical transformation institutions; "transplanting" is the transformation process that plays an intermediary role to achieve effective integration and full utilization of resources, technology, and space, making the "transplanting" process efficient and "service" results effective.

As one of library science's research objects, service is the intermediary, bridge, or link connecting librarians and readers—a cause with librarians and readers as dual axes, an organic unity of altruism (reader satisfaction, necessary condition) and self-interest (library or librarian satisfaction, sufficient condition) [25], and a cyclical progressive process requiring active management. It includes service innovation (breakthrough and incremental) and service operations (or maintenance): (1) Service innovation is the unity of librarian creativity and reader demand individuality. Its first principle is reader demand individuality—starting from reader demand individuality, leveraging librarian creativity, following first principles to trace backward and decompose downward, clarifying the underlying logic of service innovation, and reverse-constructing to integrate service technologies and products, thereby meeting leading readers' individual needs. The more consistent the coupling of the two sexes, the more concise and effective service innovation work becomes [26]. (2) Service operations is the process of frequent interaction between librarian manufacturing capacity and reader demand commonality. Its first principle is reader demand commonality—starting from reader demand commonality, leveraging librarian manufacturing capacity, through repeated practice and iterative optimization, advancing service technology and management method refinement, and service process standardization, proceduralization, and normalization, continuously improving service efficiency, reducing costs, and enhancing quality. The better the coupling of the two sexes, the higher the service standardization, and the better it meets broader readers' standardized needs. In short, the transition from librarian creativity to manufacturing, and from reader demand individuality to commonality, is the process from breakthrough and incremental service innovation to service operations, and also the process of service standardization.

In the entire service system, human nature encompasses the respective characteristics of librarians and readers; thing nature refers to the unique or essential attributes of resources, space, and technology; task nature refers to service characteristics—the regularity exhibited in the connection and coupling process between librarian manufacturing/creativity and reader demand commonality/individuality. Human nature is the starting point and destination, thing nature is the foundation and condition, and task nature is the first principle and underlying logic of services. As an intermediary variable connecting librarians and readers, service innovation and operations should be based on thing nature, conform to human nature, and follow task nature—the organic unity of thing nature, human nature, and task nature, as shown in Figure 2 [FIGURE:2].

Figure 2 Relationship Model of Librarians, Services, and Readers

7 Conclusion

Management is a cause centered on people; library science is library management science—a discipline centered on people. Librarians are the sole subject and most active creative factor in the library service production function ([2]), the sole subject and core object of library management, users of new technology, and assumptions about their human nature constitute library science's first principle.

Readers are libraries' core creators, the starting and ending point of services, and the sole measure for service evaluation, usually occupying a dominant position in the service supply-demand system. Reader demand characteristics are the first principle of service innovation and operations, determining the direction of service innovation and the methods and approaches of service operations.

Librarians are service creators and producers; readers are service consumers. Librarians embed themselves in foreseeing, investigating, analyzing, and meeting reader needs; readers also embed themselves in library governance and management. Through service as an intermediary, they serve as each other's means and ends, mutually dependent with mutually reinforcing values, increasingly integrating, gradually achieving sovereignty fusion, and ultimately forming a shared, co-created, co-prosperous, symbiotic, and co-evolving civilizational ecology.

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