Practices and thinking of public libraries in China during COVID-19

As a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, libraries in China closed their doors in early 2020 and moved all their services online. This change has brought unprecedented challenges for the development of library services, while it has also brought opportunities and motivation for the future transformation of libraries. This article uses official WeChat accounts of the National Library of China and more than 30 provincial public libraries as the main information sources to summarize and classify the services provided during the period of closure. It also collates and analyses news items released by these libraries to guide the improvement of the online services of public libraries in the pandemic environment. Finally, it puts forward the author’s reflections and suggestions on the key development directions of libraries in the post-pandemic era in six areas: reading promotion, smart libraries, new media operation, information literacy cultivation, open access and collaborative development.

The Construction and Prospect of China National Bibliography

The national bibliography is a comprehensive and systematic catalog that gathers and records the information of all the publications in a country, and serves as the base for monitoring and managing all the information related. China National Bibliography in modern times has been continuously developed and improved, thanks to the legacies from its past and the experiences of other countries. The present paper first reviews the past and the present of China National Bibliography, then discusses the progress of researches on the application of Functional Requirements for Bibliographic Records (FRBR), and finally explains the survey on the feasibility of adopting the new cataloging standard RDA in China. Although the FRBRization of China National Bibliography, to a certain extent, facilitates the readers’ use, we argue that the FRBRization of the existing MARC data cannot realize all the ideas FRBR creates. There are some problems, such as the distinctions between works and expressions, the construction issues of the bibliographic and authority data. In the process of implementing localized RDA in the cataloging of foreign materials of all languages and types, the National Library of China conducted an investigation into the feasibility of implementing RDA in the cataloging of Chinese literature, finding that although there is not a vast gulf between RDA and current Chinese cataloging standards, a lot of problems do need to be resolved both theoretically and practically. First, the Chinese national standard “Resource Description” of the day and the CNMARC standards need to be improved. Second, it is urgent to reduce the increasing manual workload of the catalogers caused by adopting RDA. Third, both the staff force and the system reserve ability of the member libraries under Online Library Cataloging Center of China should be taken into account. Fourth, RDA would add new data elements, thus the initiation of this new standard simultaneously requires updating and transforming the integrated library system. Last but not the least, the application of RDA also requires the development of corresponding online toolkits to improve the cataloging efficiency.

View on the Buildup of New Service Capability of National Library of China From the Point of Development Trend of Reference Work

With the change of information environment, the emergence of new technology, services, and new media, reference librarians and users have more choices in information acquisition methods, tools, and means. The reference consulting service is the most valuable part of developing collections, increasing comprehensive service ability, and revealing a library's social roles in the information age. The change in user demands has accelerated the transfer process which shifts the focus of library reference work from the literature retrieval to the individualized, information-oriented deep content mining, or metrology analysis. Improving the new service capacity to accomplish library service transformation is also an important goal of functional improvements to the National Library of China. In the coming years, the National Library of China will promote new services through improving the reading guidance, developing literature resources, innovating service methods, supporting national development strategy, strengthening the library's essentials, and promoting business cooperation.

Studies on a Fragment of the Old Uighur Abhidharmakośabhāṣya Preserved at the National Library of China

In this paper, the author presents a fragment of a translation of the Abidharmakośabhāṣya into Old Uighur preserved at the National Library of China, Beijing. This leaf can be connected to the Abidharmakośabhāṣya fragments preserved at the Ethnographic Museum in Stockholm and studied by Shōgaito Masahiro. Through an examination of the size, form, handwriting, etc., we conclude that all the Abidharmakośabhāṣya texts preserved in Stockholm, Kyoto, Beijing, Lanzhou, and Hangzhou belong to one and the same manuscript.

Transmission of Renaissance herbal images to China: the Beitang copy of Mattioli’s commentaries on Dioscorides and its annotations

The Beitang Collection, heritage of a seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Jesuit library in Beijing now housed in the National Library of China, contains an incomplete copy of Pietro Andrea Mattioli’s commentary on an Italian edition of Pedanius Dioscorides's De materia medica (1568) bearing extensive annotations in Chinese. Two hundred odd plant and animal names in a northern Chinese patois were recorded alongside illustrations, creating a rare record of seventeenth-century Chinese folk knowledge and of Sino-Western interaction in the field of natural history. Based on close analysis of the annotations and other contemporary sources, we argue that the annotations were probably made in Beijing by one or more Chinese low-level literati and Jesuit missionaries during the first two decades of the seventeenth century. We also conclude that the annotations were most likely directed at a Chinese audience, to whom the Jesuits intended to illustrate European craftsmanship using Mattioli’s images. This document probably constitutes the earliest known evidence of Jesuits' attempts at transmitting the art of European natural history drawings to China.

An Analysis of Manhan huangyu shanhe diming kao 滿漢皇輿山河地名考 — A Bilingual Manchu and Chinese Study of Mountain and River Toponyms of the Imperial Territories

Manhan huangyu shanhe diming kao 滿漢皇輿⼭山河地名考 A Study of Mountain and River Toponyms of the Imperial Territories is a Manchu and Chinese bilingual manuscript on geography in the collection of the National Library of China. It is a collection of toponyms covering the northeastern territory of the Qing and includes a brief description of the military achievements before the Manchu conquest of the central plains. In this paper I argue that this text is closely related to the Shengjing Jilin Heilongjiang deng chu biaozhu zhanji yutu 盛京吉林黑龍江等處標注戰跡輿圖 Map of Military Deeds in Shengjing, Jilin, Heilongjiang, and that its dating on the title page to the Qianlong gengchen nian 乾隆庚辰年 white dragon year of Qianlong (1760) is not actually the date of this manuscripts composition. The phrase of huangyu (the imperial territories) refers in the context of this work to the territory of the Qing before 1644.

Programs for Preservation of the National Book Heritage in the Library Policy of the People’s Republic of China

The purpose of the article is to summarize the information on the state of collections of ancient and rare books in the library institutions of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) by the beginning of the 21st century, to consider the content and the course of implementation of the state programs of the PRC in the field of registration, cataloguing, conservation, restoration, preservation and promotion of the national book heritage monuments. The author presents definitions of the terms “Ancient books” and “Rare books” used in China. All manuscript books and printed publications created before 1912 are considered Ancient books. Rare books include all books dated back to the period before 1795 and editions published in 1796—1912 that have outstanding historical, cultural, art and aesthetic value, as well as publishing products and documents from the period of the Republic of China (1912—1949). Chinese publications often use the term “Rare ancient books”, which refers to all manuscript books and printed publications before 1795. There are about 27 million 175 thousand copies of ancient books in the country’s libraries, including 2,5 million books created before 1795; and about 45 thousand ancient books have been preserved in a single copy.The article focuses on the programs developed with the participation of the National Library of China (NLC) and approved by the PRC Government in 2007—2018. The author reveals the main provisions of the “National Plan for Preservation of Ancient Books” (2007), as well as the powers and tasks of the National Centre for Conservation and Preservation of Ancient Chinese Books (NC), which has become the lead agency responsible for the implementation of the Plan. The paper considers the system of regional and local centres for the conservation and restoration of ancient and rare books, headed by the NC, that has developed in the PRC at present, shows the role of these centres in the field of identification, registration and cataloguing of book heritage monuments, in the creation and maintenance of a normative storage regime in old library buildings, ensuring the activities of restoration workshops, digitization of documents, preparation and online publication of full-text databases of ancient and rare books. The article emphasizes the importance of the National Museum of Classical Books, opened in July 2014 at the NLC, for promoting the national book heritage.The author notes that the priority task for the coming years is the construction of three new buildings of the National Book Depository in Beijing and Chéngdé (Hebei Province). The article concludes that over the past ten years, owing to the government support and targeted funding, China has managed to organize systematic activities in the field of conservation, preservation and promotion of the national book heritage.

Landscape-style Maps in Traditional Chinese Local Government

<p><strong>Abstract.</strong> The various landscape-style maps that we have recently been learning about were originally painted at Local government offices. It is thought that they were not made for printing and publication but were kept as government materials.</p><p>This becomes clear by looking at the <i>Daming Yitongzhi</i> 大明一統志 and various regional gazetteers, but the focus of traditional Chinese gazetteers was chronology: which individuals came from that area (like a family’s ancestors), who was appointed to that location, or whether any literary works are associated with the place. In other words, the importance of geographic texts in traditional China lay in exploring a location’s past and recognizing that area and its people.</p><p>On the other hand, maps placing importance on practical utility were also drawn to meet actual political and military demands. The annotated maps compiled by government offices in the late Ming recorded the actual state of affairs from the vantage point of administrative needs.</p><p>This change, which attached importance to local realities, became quite pronounced from the Wanli 萬暦 era onwards and can be confirmed on the basis of extant atlases and annotated maps from local government offices. An early example indicative of this trend is the <i>Linghai yutu</i> 嶺海輿圖 by Yao Yu 姚虞, which is included in the <i>Siku quanshu</i> 四庫全書 and is judged to be valuable for providing detailed information about contemporary affairs and defences and for having established a different format for local gazetteers. It is said to have been compiled when Yao Yu was regional inspector (<i>xun’an yushi</i> 巡按御史) of Guangdong and to have a preface by Zhan Ruoshui 湛若水 dated Jiajing 嘉靖 21 (1542). One reason that various maps from around the country, including annotated maps, have survived may be that a need for them came to be widely felt in government offices.</p><p>It used to be extremely rare to see the originals of maps created by late-Ming regional government offices. Subsequently, photographic reproductions of the <i>Nanjing fuxian ditu ce</i> 南京府縣地圖冊in the Zhenjiang 鎭江 Museum, the <i>Jiangxi quansheng tushuo</i> 江西全省圖説(江西輿地圖説)[Map of <i>Jiangxi Province with Explanations</i>] in the National Library of China, and other provincial maps and explanatory descriptions made using traditional techniques of the Ming and Qing periods have been included in collections like Cao Wanru曹婉如, et al. (eds.), <i>Zhongguo gudai ditu ji: Ming dai</i> 中國古代地圖集：明代 [Collection of Chinese Old Maps: The Ming Period] (Wenwu Press, 1994) and <i>Zhonghua gu ditu zhenpin xuanji</i> 中華古地圖珍品選集 [Collection of Rare Chinese Old Maps] (Ha’erbin ditu Press, 1998).</p><p>The reason for the attention paid to this early-Wanli-period <i>Jiangxi yudi tushuo</i> 江西輿地圖説 is partially because it is thought to be one of the earliest paintings by a government office, but it is also because of the existence of Zhao Bingzhong 趙秉忠’s <i>Jiangxi yudi tushuo</i> (<i>Jilu huibian</i> 紀録彙編, fasc. 208) and Wang Shimao王世懋’s Rao Nan Jiu sanfu tushuo饒南九三府圖説 (<i>Jilu huibian</i>, fasc. 209), works from the same period that can be contrasted with this map book.</p><p>I have discussed this in detail elsewhere, but we have confirmed, from photographs of picture map and explanatory descriptions of Taihe 泰和 County contained in the <i>Zhonghua gu ditu zhenpin xuanji</i>, that the original early-Wanli-period <i>Jiangxi yudi tushuo</i> is extant in the collection of the National Library of China in Beijing, making it possible to investigate the specifics of government-office illustrations. It also became clear that the textual contents of the <i>Jiangxi yudi tushuo</i> (held by the National Library of China in Beijing) and the <i>Jilu huibian</i> version are nearly identical.</p>