As of 22 April 2009 this website is 'frozen' in time — see the current IFLA websites
This old website and all of its content will stay on as archive – http://archive.ifla.org
As of 22 April 2009 this website is 'frozen' in time — see the current IFLA websites
This old website and all of its content will stay on as archive – http://archive.ifla.org
The main function of the seven pavilions is collecting of books, but borrowing books for reference seldom happened. It was after the War of Opium that China began to build the library which has the characteristics of modern public libraries. The reading rooms for readers to read books were first provided in sequence in Storage Building for Old Books built in Shaoxing of Zhenjiang in 1897, the Ji angnan Library built in Nanjing of Jiangsu in 1908 and Jingshi library built in Beijing in 1916 and so on.
In the beginning of 20 century, the library buildings with European and American styles were built in sequence with the input of western cultures, such as the 'Tsinghua University' library building which was built in 1919 and enlarged in 1931, the Mengfang library of Southeastern University which was built in 1922 and enlarged in 1933 with three independent parts for collecting, borrowing and rea ding , and with uncrossed streamline for readers and books. These libraries have not only been used for collecting of books, but also for borrowing, and become the public activity sites of readers. According to statistics, there had been 2935 libraries of various kinds by 1930 and 6191 libraries by 1936 throughout the country. After the P.R. China was founded in 1949 , there have been great dev elopment in library. Especially during the past 15 years, Chinese library buildings have had breakthrough not only on numbers and scales, but also on levels. According to incomplete statistics, from 1949 to 1987, there built 1440 public libraries on and above the level of county, 1158 university libraries, 4500 special libraies, 246000 trade unions's libraries(rooms) and 32264 military libraries (note 1). Compared with the beginning of P.R. China in 1949, the numbes of various libraries have increased more than 40 times. The numbers of university libraries increased 7.9 times from 132 in 1949 to 11175 in 1989, with the total collections reaching 400 million volumes and areas totaling 4,400,000 square meter. The libraries under the China academy of science increased 7.4 times from 17 in 1949 to 143 in 1990 , with the total collection of 80,000,000 volume (note 2). Up to now, China has 2579 public libraries on /above the county level, and also has 77 independent libraries for children and juvenility, and more than 160 motional libraries (note 3).
In addition, there were also a large set of county public libraries and libraries for children and juvenility in middle and small scale. During this period, with the reform and progress of library management work, the new library had the new breakthrough in the plane of architect design in addition to the characters of large number and scale. For example , the library of Hefi industrial college was divided into four units according to function requirement. These four units were combined freely and appeared as the yard made of four houses (Siheyuan), therefore, broke the style of normal symmetric and strict layout. The plane of the library of Nanjing railway Medical College is normal rectangularity, adopting 5.0 m by 5.0 m rising planet structure with column net, large openning and depth . The library used light seperating wall to divid space, with the ability to rearrange and move the wall. The stack lies in a corner of the rectangular plane , the building of the library has same story height, which provides the conditions for future open shelf reading. This building was one of earlier practical example attempting to combine foreign design method of modular library with practic al situation in China. With the flourishing development of " four modernization construction" in China, normal traditional borrowing and reading method of books and materials cannot meet the need in large. Therefore, the requirement of borrowing and reading in open shelf were put forward in general. Out of question, this was a powerful impulse to management and building design of librar ies. In the beginning of 1980's, professionel persons sysmatically import the design method of modular library developed after the World War Two, which made more designers to explore a new way adaptive to building design of libraries in China according to the practical situation of China.
In 1987, " the Building Design Code for Library " was approved and promulgated by the Ministy of Urban and Rural Building and Environmental Protection, Ministry of Culture and State Committee of Education, and was enforced on Oct. 1 of the year. The code was the first technical regulation for building design of library since the P.R. China was founded and also was the summarization of more than 30 years' experience of building design of library. Management system of open shelf such as reading in open shelf and in stack was first put forward by universities, science and research institutes and some libraries in basic units. What this management method pay attention to are more close and wide contact and the largest shortening of distance between readers and knowledge carries, and most simple procedure of borrowing and reading. Therefore, the management system of reading in open shelves appeared and the function of collection, borrowing, reading and management in reading room began to form a unified unit, which was one of big breakthrough in building design of libraries. With the appearance of the unit mentioned above, the space of reading room was required to be enlarge d and to had adequate possibility for flexible arragement so that the opening and depth of building were enlarged. In order to solve the contradiction of light and ventralization and strengthen changebility of application, some new forms were studied out, in that reading space can be freely divided, actively seperated, changed in area and adjusted. For example, the library of Funan University h ave made the attemption and acheived good effect. Afer that, the requirement for unified column net, unified floor loads and even for unified story height to the design of libraries were put forward by many designers for the purpose of making the whole building more adaptive. In addition to this, with the import of advanced technology and equipment of library such as computer, microfilm and vedi o/hearing and so on, a set of new library with Chinese characteristics were sprung up in sequence during the period. At same time, most architect also paid attention to interior and exterior environmental design and strive to create a new, unaffected and cultural shape, and provide interior space of good reading condition for readers, which was also one of the characteristics of library building in this period.
Now, some library buildings having characteristics and breakthrough are generalized as follows: Design of the Library of Sichuan University was based on reading and management of open shelves, breaking traditional plane of nn shape composed of four large parts of collecting, borrowing, reading and management, and adopting design method of modular type to unify column net and form several facult and student reading units in different district, and several parts of the district of stack, reservation and special collection and so on. Each district depends on other and also is independent ralatively. Considering open shelf reading, the library was designed for the possibility to enter into the stack to read, with 2.8 m story height. Each stack story is structure story using beamless roof a nd motivable shelves. The advantage of this design is that the flexible arrangment in near future and reading and management of open shelves in long future can be made Chinese libraries building gradually formed own design module (close shelves: 1250 mm, open shelves: 1500 mm) by absorbing the advantage of foreign modular design.
Major openning and dimension of column are determined based on times of basic module, which are not only adaptive to desk and chair arrangement of reading room, but also adative to shelf layout in stack, with the possibility of interchangebility. By practical summarization, the column net dimension in general use is 5.0 m by 5.0 m for close shelves and 7.5 m by 7.5 m for open shelves. This unit area under column net is more adaptive to reading of open shelf, collection of close shelf, reading in the stack and division of general official aid rooms.
The new library of Tsinghua university which was built in 1991, was built beside the old library. Because the design fully consider unification of forms between new and old library and harmonious of the new and old library with space environment of nearby buildings, the new library was unified as a whole body with old one after the new library was completed, which got the good appraisal from all fields. What deserve to be mentioned is the library of Beijing Agricultural University completed in July of 1990, which were designed and constructed carefully according to Chinese own conditions after the advantages of foreign modular library were fully studied and absorbed, and realized large space (6.6 m by 6.6mcolunm net), full open shelf, and an organic whole of four functions of collectin g, borrowing, reading and management. After the library have been used for 3 years, it was considered unanimously as one of good libraries among the China's modern libraries under the appraisal of experts from both the fields of library and architects. The efforts and attemption of the library to realize modernization of library have made active contribution to construction and development of ch inese university libraries in the future. The library of Shenzhen City, the Library of Guangdong Provience and new Beijing Library which is the highest level in China can be considered as the representations of libraries with high standard , technology and level in this period. The appearence of them marks that the construction of Chinese modern library has reached the international advanced lev els. The common characteristics of them are as follows:
The new Beijing Library are considered to be the representation of Chinese modern library buildings in this period not only on building design and technical level, but also on shape and arts, in which much experience can be summarized and absorbed by late people.
At present, the "eight aims" have been realized at different degrees in newly built libraries. The policy of undertaking building design based on the directive idea of open shelf has been accepted by large numbers of libraries building designers and readers. Therefore, It is necessary to summarize experience more deeply, strength the understand and complete practice so that chinese librar y cause can develope continously to good direction. According to Chinese situation, study and use "modular library" for reference. 1, In the aspect of shorting the distance between acceptors of knowledge and information(readers) and knowledge media (carrier) and advancing efficiency of borrowing and reading, great amount of work and attempt has been made for recent more than 10 years in China. The open borrowing and reading, and management method such as open shelf reading and enterting stack reading, etc. which give readers most convinience and most effect service have been accepted and welcomed by both librarians and readers. Therefore, after World War Two, the building type of modular library developed in Europe and America, attract the attention of chinese library field. The obvious characteristics of this type is designing according to a certain principle of modular type, having bigger space and unified column net, story height and loading capacity ( called " 3 unification" in abbreviation), formming different function space by funiture and try to adapting to need and developement of multi functions of libraries (note 5). Therefore, this type has stronger vitality. Because the foreign examples are not fully adaptive to chinese situation, in the practice of building library in China, the " 3 unifications" principle of dular library are absorbed in more cases. But the importances of bigger space, more adaptivity, making the collection, borrowing, reading and manageing into one body and forming the relative independent work and building unit are not fully understand.
I believe that it is convinient to readers and has obvious effect to centralize reading area relatively, enlarge space appropriately and increasing books which can be readed by readers. The quality of management work can also be advanced so that librarians have further understand and command to the books in the units under charge of them, and there are possibility to connect contact and communica tion between readers and librarian to make librarians in each units of reservation, borrowing, reading and management become important media between readers and books and catalyst to make knowledge and information to produce efficiency most fully. Therefore, clerks are not only circulation workers and reservation workers, but are more material workers, consultors and information workers, even th e instructors of readers for study. This is the direction for future development and inject the new blood into library work and give the library new vitality. The future library should be the service center of comprehensive communication of knowledge, materials and information, etc.
Just by this reason, there are more urgent need to enlarge suitablely reading space of library, and this will be certainly realized. Try best to quantitize the design of library A building is matter, but also has the side of psyche; building is engineering, but also has the requirement of arts. Therefore, it is not possible to demand building design to quantitate in each step and each procedure, but the library can not all be designed by sense perceptions. Eevery affairs always has objective appraisal standards and the parts which can be quantitated should be tried best to be determined by quantity. Such building design can only just be more scientific. The problems such as " 3 unifications" need to be unified further. What "3 unifications" means is the unification of lo ading, column net and story height of reservation and reading space in modular library.
At present, the "3 unifications" is made only in a library self, but under the same conditions, the libraries are not unified each other. According to statistics, the loads, story height and column net of more tham 10 large libraries which were built recently are all not unified, each one having own parameters.
Therefore, the problem of "3 unifications" should be studied as an important subjects, striving to search for a best datus which is more adaptive to multi needs and is economic so that the "3 unifications" are really realized.
Environment also has obvious use functions and value of appreciation of arts. The creation of environment has same importance as the creation of buildings.
(1) Distance: From the view of behaviour science,the distance to keep between one person to another relatively under different relation, occasion and different contact method is different. People live under certain environment and have desirable undisturbed least space, which is called the domain of people. By investigation, the domain is about 70 120 cm. If this requirement can not be me t, people will feel crowded and unsafety.At present, seats in our libraries are arranged in very compact method and distance between two seats is only 70 80 cm. I think that this arrangement violate behaviour law of people in some degree. Therefore, we can often find that readers don't sit by shoulder or on opposite side when there are not many readers, because they don't hope their domain to b e contracted. For this purpose, the distance between two seats in reading rooms ought to be enlarged to about 100 cm or seats may be insulated or sheltered in some degree so that readers feel their domains not to be encroached.
(2) The size of rooms is a very important problem of library buildings. If a reading room is a little big, some people will always worry that there will be noise and disturb, but, in fact the order of readers in a big reading room is much better than that in a small reading room. In addition to the reason of management, analysing from behaviour science, it is mainly because psychology of r eaders in reading rooms of different size are different. The more people, the bigger mutual restrictive force there is, and the more standardized behaviour readers have. When there are only a few readers, the self control force of people will be relaxed and the behaviour will be out of control. Therefore, seeing from behaviour science, a little bigger reading room is feasible and also necessary. How large a consulting room is better and how long a consulting desk is better? From behaviour science, I think that the size of a consulting room and length of a consulting desk are based on that consultors can concentrate their attention and deal with the problems asked by all readers. By investigation, the biggest number of a consultor can serve at on time is 7, because according to people's behaviour of identification of quantity, the number which a person can control most agilely and quickly at one time is not over 7. How to determine the size of a study room? Determination of the size of study rooms is also based on the investigation result of behaviour of users of these rooms. Study rooms are mainly used for study and discussion and it is best for each participant to have chan ce to give his views and to have conditions to pay his attention to discussion. According to statistics, when there are 24 delegates as a group in a small seminars, there are often 6 participants who will not give their views; when there are 12 delegates as a group, there are only about 1 participant who will not give his views. Therefore, if we want to discuss some problem with high efficiency and high quality, it is necessary to limit the number of participants. I think that it is better to design a study room according to the capacity of about 10 participants. This small study room is the most efficient one.
The building designs introducing the views of behaviour science has made more deep step than these designs based only on function and activity. This try and attemption has just begun and I wish my colleagues to consider this factor in future building design and explore this field actively. It is estimated that some breakthrough achievements are going to be made if we continous to do this researc h.It is an inexorable trend that libraries realize electronic controlled system in every field. The wide application of Multi Medium will necessary bring revolutionary change again to the function of libraries. Chinese libraries will inevitablly develope toward this direction in near future. But this is another broad subject and now I don't discuss this problem in details. Chinese library buil dings, with the continous development of Chinese library cause, will certainly have new development. Duing the course of development, we want to exchange and study mutually with friends and colleagues of all countries for the purpose of progress in common.
The third draft, April 1995, Beijing
Note 1: Chinese Big Encyclopaedia " Chinese library course "
Note 2: Chinese Big Encyclopaedia " Chinese library course "
Note 3: The People's Daily 1995 02 18 " one of inquiry and analysis on the problems of public libraries"
Note 4: Chinese Big Encyclopaedia " Chinese library course "
Note 5: Chinese Big Encyclopaedia > "Modular libraries "