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Top1. Introduction
The National Library of China (NLC) is a comprehensive research library. Its predecessor was the Capital Library, which was founded on September 9, 1909, and began performing the functions of the National Library since 1929. With a floor area of 280,000 square meters, the NLC is the largest library in Asia. As of the end of 2016, the total number of collections was over 3.65 million, and received about 15,000 users per day.
Figure 1.
National Library of China
According to the “Public Library Law of the People's Republic of China,” which came into effect on January 1, 2018, the functions of the NLC include: national literature information preservation, national bibliography and joint cataloging, serving national legislation and decision-making, organizing the work of national ancient books protection, library development research and international cultural exchanges, and providing operational guidance and technical support to other libraries. The National Library also has the function of a public library prescribed by this law.
The reference consulting service is the most valuable part of developing collections, increasing comprehensive service ability, and revealing a library’s social role in the information age. The service has been run for 100 years in NLC, and over 1 million consulting services are provided each year. How to give full play to, and improve efficient reference work service in the new information ecosystem is an important research topic of promoting the new service capacity’s buildup in NLC.
TopThe development of technology and the following change in the information environment provides ample space and a higher platform for the continuation, and further development of library information service. But for libraries, the change brings a great influence on the existing service model, and then, form a new trend of change, which caused the library community to undergo profound changes in the field of information service.
2.1. The Basic Relationship Between the Librarian and User Has Been Overturned
Human history and civilization are recorded and passed down through the literature. Libraries have long been known and utilized as the places of preserving human cultural heritage, and transmitting knowledge and information. Librarians act as effective information intermediaries between the extensive collection of literature, and the specific needs of users to help library users find and utilize the literature.
This situation was soon broken with the advent of the information age: most college students see the search engine as a perfect lifestyle choice (OCLC, 2006). Although people attach great importance to the service and human resources of traditional libraries in the field of information, they have adapted to the new information world, and the new opportunities to approach information resources (JISC, 2010). The development of digital resources and network services has greatly enhanced the user's per capita literature utilization, and libraries are more inclined to purchase electronic resources (Lumos Research Inc., 2011).
These findings are reflections of the significant impact of information environment changes on libraries' existing user relationships with the extensive use of internet and digital resources. That is to say, comparing to few information resources from libraries in the past, users today can easily reach out for more information from internet and digital resources. Thus, the public’s attention to the traditional library is significantly diluted. Finally, the function of the library was replaced by the search engine when information retrieval was conducted. Therefore, a librarians' mediating role in the use of collections to obtain documentary information has been greatly weakened, and the traditional librarians - user relations have been broken totally.