M. Kathleen Kern, Editor
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In May 2008 I spent a month working at the Shanghai Library as part of a work exchange. A month is a long time to be gone from work and home, but a short time to become acquainted with a library as large as the Shanghai Library. In this column I will share a few of my thoughts on my experience. Some of my observations are about technology, some on other aspects of the library, and some are more cultural reflection. I hope that you will enjoy this persion from the regular Accidental Technologist topics.
Overview of Shanghai and the Shanghai Library
Shanghai is located in the center of the Pacific Chinese coast. It is a major trade and financial center with a population of more than 13 million people. Construction is rampant, with the entire area east of the Huangpu river (Pudong) new since 1993. The Shanghai Library and Institute of Scientific and Technological Information of Shanghai is one of the ten largest libraries in the world and the second largest library in China. It houses more than 50 million items and serves 9 million users a year. In likening it to a U.S. library, it seems close to the New York Public Research Libraries, except with a circulating collection. The 1996 merger with the Institute of Scientific and Technological Information of Shanghai brought scientific and industry research assistance into the purview of the Shanghai Library.
Within the Shanghai Central Libraries network are fifty-four district and community public libraries. While the district and community libraries are public, they are administratively separate from the main Shanghai Library, with separate funding and governance. The network started in 2000 and aims to increase cooperation and provide a “one-card-through” service to library patrons that can be used at all of the Shanghai public libraries.
My time at the Shanghai Library was pided between several departments. My first two weeks were primarily with the Friendship Library in the foreign documents pision, where I offered English-language reference assistance and learned about the library. (I also spent some time adjusting to the time zone and figuring out living on my own in a large city where I spoke none of the language. The head librarian in that unit was very helpful.) Next I spent about a week with the interlibrary lending, document delivery, and document supply center. The last week contained some time with acquisitions and cataloging, tours of two branch libraries, and the digitization and preservation units, and presenting a lecture on my final day. Somewhere in the twenty-five days I visited Nanjing and Suzhou, spent three days buying books, learned to use the subway, and spent hours walking miles through the city.
Shanghai is a very safe city. I’ve heard that most of China is this way, but I felt like I was in a particularly safe place. My lodging was at a hotel immediately behind the library, and there were guards by the hotel and by the library. It was also a block from the U.S. Embassy, which had Chinese Army guards stationed outside. Shanghai was also easy to navigate, since the street signs are in both Chinese characters and the Romanized Pinyin. The subway stops are labeled in Mandarin and English. The total of my knowledge of Mandarin consists of “hello,” “thank you,” and “good,” but people under about twenty-five years of age have been required to study a second language starting at age 10, and most choose English.
Building the New, Celebrating the Old
I traveled to three cities while in China. In all three places I saw significant new cultural institutions. Nanjing and Shanghai both have magnificent new libraries, and Suzhou has a museum designed by renowned architect I. M. Pei. There are numerous other new cultural institutions in Shanghai as well. The historical, cultural, and economical antecedents to this recent proliferation of cultural institutions are complex. As a casual traveler, however, my impression was of a city (indeed a nation) exerting its identity and pride.
Embodied in the buildings of the Shanghai and Nanjing libraries were the themes of history and modernity. Modernity was often mentioned by the staff of the library. It was also echoed by my guide in Nanjing when she showed me her city’s library. Modernity was something that the librarians wanted to bring to my attention, but would have been evident without comment. The automated book-delivery trolley in Shanghai, the array of computers in the lobby in Nanjing, and the very architecture of both buildings impress the visitor as state-of-the-art upon sight.
At the same time, history is highlighted in both buildings as well. The Nanjing Library is built over part of the old city road, and through a glass floor in the basement one can see and walk over the tracks left hundreds of years ago by wagons. The Shanghai Library has a room devoted to genealogies, with several ancient volumes on permanent display. Next to that is a room where the public can view the restoration process for ancient documents. The Shanghai Library also has an interior courtyard evoking traditional Chinese gardens.
This “forward to the future” mentality is also present in the Expo Reading Room. Shanghai will host the 2010 World Expo. There is a reading room that houses a historical collection of World’s Fair and Expo books, maps, brochures, and memorabilia as well as contemporary publications to help Expo planners and researchers. The Expo is very big in Shanghai and tied to city pride with the motto of “Better City, Better Life.” The library is part of this planning and one of the buildings being built for the Expo will eventually be a district public library.
For-fee Services
The Shanghai Library has a staggering array of services available, many targeted to business and industry. Most of these I did not witness first-hand. With only a month in Shanghai and less than twenty days in the library, there was a lot that I did not see. I did participate in one of the library’s research services—housed in the document delivery department—which provided in-depth research, particularly for more science-focused industry. As I currently work at an academic library where the model is to provide instruction in the use of resources, the opportunity to sink myself into a market analysis was a trip back in time to when I worked for a management consulting firm.
Other for-fee services are as far-ranging as document translation, book restoration, rare book valuation, and current-events clipping services. There is a list of services on the left-hand menu of the services page of the English-language version of the Shanghai Library website. Some of these services, such as the online reference service, are free. Others carry a fee, although fees are not listed on the English version of the website.
For-fee service is a fraught issue in the United States and has been the cause of debate among librarians. There are the ethical questions of what we can charge for as publicly funded institutions and if it is counter to the concept of free access to information. We may have fewer qualms when it comes to chargeback for in-depth research for business, but then we find ourselves in a legal environment where we must pay close attention to our database licensing agreements.
The Shanghai Library is very entrepreneurial, using the wide array of librarian expertise to offer services for businesses and inpiduals with needs outside of reading and basic research. Certainly there is a different service philosophy, as well as a different legal environment, that underlies this service model. Even at the level of library cards and readers’ access there is a stratified system with four levels of fees.