CHINA, NATIONAL, SOCIETY, EDITORIAL: The Urgent Need for a Digital Library in China
By Tian Yuan
There is no proper digital library for foreign language materials for college students in China. Thousands of obstacles are found on the way to obtain knowledge from libraries. The government should pave the way for college students to get free use of digital libraries.
Digital libraries are urgently in need for college students now. In China, most of the universities have their own libraries but few of them get enough, or even the proper, books for students whose major subjects have close relationships with studies conducted in foreign countries.
Take Beijing Foreign Studies University for example, if you are majoring in journalism, you can find few books on your subject in the school library and all the teachers there advise you to go to the National Library of China for the information you need. However, the National Library asks a thousand Yuan as a deposit for borrowing books in foreign languages, which is too much for a college student.
This just shows the dilemma nowadays: college students are encouraged to use libraries more, while libraries are asked to be better protected by limited use. Therefore, a digital library has a proper reason for existing--it can provide students all the books they need while keeping the originals from the ruination caused by too much reading and handling.
But the fact is that there is no proper digital library for students in China. The recent news that the U.S. Library of Congress is setting up a system for creating digital copies of rare documents from around the world may offer a ray of hope. However, the Internet service inside college campuses around China is provided by Tsinghua University and its control center is located at that university, which charges more for logging onto foreign internet sites. In other words, if one needs to visit a site based in a foreign country, one must pay more money, about 1 Yuan for 1MB of data, to Tsinghua University or its Internet provider/partner.
Most students cannot afford it. Therefore the channel for college students to get to foreign digital books is blocked. As mentioned above, not being able to get enough and/or the proper books from the library, and with their use of foreign digital libraries being limited by finances, what can college students do if they need to study foreign sources?
A proper answer might be that China should eliminate the control of Internet service inside campuses and give college students free access to foreign academic sites, especially digital libraries. That may cause an increase in the education budget for a short period, but the result will prove worth it.
As college students get more useful information in time and learn their majors better, they can make more contributions to their motherland. This is good both for China's efforts at catching up with the developed countries and for students trying to improve themselves.
There is no proper digital library for foreign language materials for college students in China. Thousands of obstacles are found on the way to obtain knowledge from libraries. The government should pave the way for college students to get free use of digital libraries.
Digital libraries are urgently in need for college students now. In China, most of the universities have their own libraries but few of them get enough, or even the proper, books for students whose major subjects have close relationships with studies conducted in foreign countries.
Take Beijing Foreign Studies University for example, if you are majoring in journalism, you can find few books on your subject in the school library and all the teachers there advise you to go to the National Library of China for the information you need. However, the National Library asks a thousand Yuan as a deposit for borrowing books in foreign languages, which is too much for a college student.
This just shows the dilemma nowadays: college students are encouraged to use libraries more, while libraries are asked to be better protected by limited use. Therefore, a digital library has a proper reason for existing--it can provide students all the books they need while keeping the originals from the ruination caused by too much reading and handling.
But the fact is that there is no proper digital library for students in China. The recent news that the U.S. Library of Congress is setting up a system for creating digital copies of rare documents from around the world may offer a ray of hope. However, the Internet service inside college campuses around China is provided by Tsinghua University and its control center is located at that university, which charges more for logging onto foreign internet sites. In other words, if one needs to visit a site based in a foreign country, one must pay more money, about 1 Yuan for 1MB of data, to Tsinghua University or its Internet provider/partner.
Most students cannot afford it. Therefore the channel for college students to get to foreign digital books is blocked. As mentioned above, not being able to get enough and/or the proper books from the library, and with their use of foreign digital libraries being limited by finances, what can college students do if they need to study foreign sources?
A proper answer might be that China should eliminate the control of Internet service inside campuses and give college students free access to foreign academic sites, especially digital libraries. That may cause an increase in the education budget for a short period, but the result will prove worth it.
As college students get more useful information in time and learn their majors better, they can make more contributions to their motherland. This is good both for China's efforts at catching up with the developed countries and for students trying to improve themselves.
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