Editor’s note: On February 16, 2016, the Ministry of Education (MOE) issued a notice entitled, “ Recognition of Party Member's Vanguard Post: Outstanding Innovative Work and Excellent Research Report in 2015" (the fifth of the Educational Institution Party Committee, 2016). The Open University of China (OUC) Digital Library’s “Cooperative Service Work Method” was awarded “Excellent Innovative Work.”
For a long time, the quality and nature of distance education have been the focus of public attention. Conditions such as whether there are library services, and how distance learners take advantage of a library and use it in their studies have become one of the key factors affecting the quality and development of distance education. Since the OUC’s central digital library began building digital libraries for an educational system covering the entire country in 2008, it has adhered to a model of “co-construction, sharing, and collaborative services.” Its collaborative business model, providing services for distance open education learners, has been gradually established at libraries based at headquarters, branches, and grassroots school units, effectively solving the issue of how to provide library services in distance education. The development enables the OUC’s digital libraries to become the library system serving the largest number of people and covering the most extensive area among all the libraries in higher education, thus guaranteeing its effective function.
Services offered by the OUC’s digital library are fulfilled through collaboration with libraries and reading rooms in different locations and schools. Although such practices as operating under specific models, like a “union of libraries” and “headquarters and branch libraries system” already existed in both public libraries and libraries in higher education both at home and abroad, the coordination of literature information services between the OUC’s digital libraries spread throughout the nationwide education system focuses on providing grassroots services without limitations. Its operation and maintenance must incorporate the status quo in both the country and the university so as to construct an enormous library system in an innovative way. This system is made up of libraries at headquarters, branches, and grassroots school units. Since the OUC’s digital library opened and began providing services for tutors and students in open education, the exploration of this work has obtained regular results and provided effective digital library support services for millions of tutors and students.
I. Using collaborative services to build a new type of university digital library
The cooperative services of the OUC’s digital library takes place in the collaboration between the libraries at the headquarters, branches, and grassroots school units, in which the library at the headquarters provides general coordination; the branches delegate the location; and the grassroots school units apply the information. All the work is based on the OUC’s education system. Its overall operation and maintenance is characterized by a rational division of labour, organic integration, and broad consideration of and organisation for the nation as a whole. A service team is composed of curators and technicians from libraries at the headquarters and branches which carry out all kinds of work to maintain the established network. Branches organize their local service teams to make possible the spread of service coverage from a single location to a string of sites, and then to covering an entire area, while maintaining a grassroots service. Developing the cooperative services involves the following approaches:
1. Adhering to a “student-centred” service concept. The digital library’s collaborative service aims to solve problems for all tutors and students, especially those in minority, undeveloped, and remote areas. Additionally, the service aims to provide effective literature information services and learning assistance, and in consideration of actual learning conditions for distance open education students, to achieve digital library access “anytime and anywhere.”
2. Adhering to the idea of a collaborative system. The digital library’s collaborative services carry out all kinds of work based on the OUC’s education system. They form logically divide work among libraries located at headquarters, branches, and grassroots school units.
3. Remaining focused on grassroots service. Emphasizing that grassroots school units should focus on popularizing the application of the system, and that “application is construction,” so that the application of the OUC’s digital library actually “lands” on the ground. Tutors and students at the grassroots level should be able to fully utilize the libraries. As such, construction must take place through application.
II. “Five collaborations” promote effective service
The realization of the goal of accessing the OUC’s digital library anytime, anywhere, and by anyone relies on the specific implementation of information technology at its core and, more importantly, using cooperative services effectively to guarantee its long-term operation. Innovation of the cooperative service mechanism is reflected in the following “five collaborations”:
1. Resource collaboration. This collaboration emphasizes the co-construction and sharing of resources between digital libraries across the education system. The library at headquarters introduces universal literature information resources covering comprehensive content for the education system to use. The branches introduce thematic, targeted, and topic-specific literature resources. For every resource, the goal is to “grant authority to provincial levels while providing services to individuals” in the education system.
2. Systematic collaboration. The OUC’s digital library is a uniform platform that provides services. Librarians at headquarters, branches, and grassroots school units collaborate using this single platform, and readers acquire information from literature on this same platform, creating “one-stop, streamlined service.”
3. Consulting collaboration. This means that, on a uniform platform, the requirements of every query and information request put forward by readers regarding literature will be met according to the content and region, so as to realize quick responses to readers’ queries.
4. Promotion collaboration. This collaboration leads the library at headquarters to instruct training and promotional activities. Meanwhile, branch libraries carry out secondary training and grassroots level libraries carry out the actual implementation. This has realized the coordination and unifying of promotional activities, as well as the use of publicity materials and tutorials.
5. Activity collaboration. The digital library collaboratively carries out activities, such as a nationwide reading campaign to promote the formation of a reading culture in the education system and enhancing efficient use of the digital library.
III. Appraisal of the digital library’s services
Since its overall implementation, the OUC’s digital library has become the most extensive library system, with the widest coverage and greatest number of readers among all higher education library systems. On the basis of this successful application in the education system, expansion and exploration were carried out around social services, such as a digital library service for government functionaries, the Wenzhou Learning Network’s citizen services, and Hefei Learning Network’s citizen services.
The specific work and case study of the OUC’s digital library have been successively awarded “Advanced Unit for Nationwide Reading” (in both 2009 and 2010), “Nationwide Reading Base” (2011), and “Excellent Promotion of Reading in Communities and Towns” (2011). The digital library also participated in higher education digital library competitions in Beijing from 2009 to 2013. The progress made through the digital library’s cooperative services was reported by national and mainstream media, such as “The People’s Daily,” “The Guangming Daily,” “The China Education Daily,” “The China Library Weekly,” and other publications; all of these results were unanimously affirmed by related departments and industries.
Through participating in the OUC’s digital library, libraries at branches and grassroots school units have enhanced their own ability to serve their local readers and improve their library’s operating strength.
Upon reviewing the results, the actual number of times articles and documents were downloaded from the OUC’s digital library has reached over 17 million annually in recent years. A strong response was also reported at the grassroots level. Learners and tutors in remote areas, and areas having no library services, especially affirmed the services provided by the OUC’s digital library.
By OUC Library