Lighting up the lights for builders and leaving a foothold, the "Shenzhen Exploration" of public libraries

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In the summer of June 2020, a message from migrant worker Wu Guichun in the Dongguan Library went viral across the Internet. He wrote: "I came to Dongguan for seventeen years, of which I came to the library to read books for twelve years, books can be clear, and there is no harm to people, only books." However, due to the difficult impact of the epidemic on the industry, he was forced to return to his hometown due to his livelihood. Recalling 17 years of life in Dongguan, he said that the library is the best place, the rest of his life will not forget the Dongguan Library, may the Dongguan Library become more and more prosperous, know Dongguan, know the benefits of migrant workers.

After the story of Wu Guichun and Dongguan Library brushed the screen, people are also thinking, what kind of cultural functions and values do public libraries carry for migrant workers? For Shenzhen, a megacity with a population of more than 20 million in practice, and a new immigrant city that is often ridiculed as a "cultural desert", the construction of public libraries seems to be particularly important.

At the intersection of Niushan Road and Quanming Road in Guangming Street, Guangming District, Shenzhen, the Guangming District Library is located here, and the open curved gate of the building is like a corner of a book page. Here, an experiment is underway on the digital construction and operation of public libraries, with a view to crossing the geographical intellectual class, narrowing the digital divide, and making the services of public libraries closer to the public and benefiting the general public.

Digital practice, let people no longer "look at the book and sigh"

As usual, Mai Shushi, a librarian of the Guangming District Library, came to work at 8:30 a.m. - the Reader Service Desk, and she had to rush to the official opening of the library at nine o'clock to ensure the normal operation of the retrieval equipment, self-service borrowing machine, reader card machine and other equipment in the reading area on the floor, and also to remove the newspapers from the newspaper reading area, and register, sort out and put on the shelves the new newspapers of the day.

After sorting out the newspaper, Mai Yishi began to patrol the floor of the museum, whether readers wear masks during the epidemic prevention period, call in the reading area to influence others, and do a good job of civilized guidance. At the same time, it is also necessary to sort out the books returned by readers, as well as the books that are messed up and misplaced in the library.

In this ordinary post, Mai Hashishi has been working for nearly 10 years. She recalled that in the past, her work in the library was to manually take the book to register the reader's ID card information, the date of borrowing, and when returning the book, she had to go through the book to find the record. Readers can only see the process of reading or borrowing books in the library, and they cannot know what books are in the library, or whether they want a book or whether other libraries have it.

In recent years, with the construction of the digitization of the library in the Guangming District, she has felt some new changes. The rapid induction of the read and write board, the rapid certification of the machine, the scanning gun, etc., all save a lot of time for administrators and readers, and the process is more convenient. With the interconnection of digitalization, books can be queried to the status of books in the city's libraries through the internet, avoiding the long process of readers going to the library but finding that there are no books they need, and then going to the next library to find.

For example, Mai Shushi said that in the past, manual registration, readers borrowed 5 or 6 books, plus queuing, registration, each person took about 5 minutes. Nowadays, there are self-service book machines on each floor. "There is almost no queue for borrowing and returning books, because even if you borrow 10 books, it is 20 to 30 seconds."

Not only that, in order to help administrators like Mai Shushi free themselves from the heavy work of book sorting, the library has also fully introduced intelligent inspection robots and intelligent bookshelf systems. The intelligent inspection robot can help administrators improve the efficiency of book inventory, only need to occupy a little time after work, and can complete the inspection of millions of books in one month.

The intelligent bookshelf system based on The Internet of Things technology can automatically collect and locate the data of books. Through a small RFID chip on each book in the library, it can be mutually inductive with the induction board of the smart bookshelf, and the book information can not only automatically appear on the display screen at the front of the smart bookshelf, but also upload data to the background system in real time, and the administrator does not need to repeat the book shelf adjustment.

For readers, after reading in the library, there is no need to struggle with which shelf the book should be put back, the book is placed in any position on the smart shelf, the information can be fed back to the smart center, and the real-time information collection allows the system to update the current shelf position of the book instantly.

In this way, in the face of a vast sea of books, everyone no longer "looks at the books and sighs". According to the relevant person in charge of the information construction of the guangming district library, the library returns books and sorts 24 hours a day, which solves the problem of not being able to return books after the closure of the library, sorting is from scratch, before it was manual sorting, after the use of automated sorting equipment, the efficiency should be said to be a qualitative leap, increased several times, and sorting is more accurate.

The butterfly change of traditional libraries has changed from passive service to active service

In the process of human social development, the construction of libraries is an eternal topic, as an important place to store the crystallization of human wisdom, libraries can be said to be the cornerstone of human progress. Entering the era of digital economy, "library + digitization" is also bringing about the butterfly change of traditional library intelligent services.

The digital practice and exploration of the Guangming District Library are inseparable from the data center computer room built by Huawei on the sixth floor of the library. The interconnection of smart applications in the library, resource procurement, book sorting, self-service borrowing and certification of readers, etc., people come and go, and books are borrowed and returned, all of which are realized through the data center here.

Xu Deshou is a person who is familiar with the data center computer room, he is the first employee of the Guangming District Library, and has been working in the library since graduating in July 2012 and has been working in library information technology. In the nearly 10 years of his work, with the increasing prosperity of the commercial society and the rise of the Internet, libraries have no longer adhered to the traditional borrowing methods, and in the era of digital economy, the way libraries serve readers is also quietly changing.

"The intelligent application of libraries is inseparable from the support of data centers." Xu Deshou said: "Relying on the massive data provided by the 'wisdom brain', the library can further tap the personalized reading needs of readers and customize different book lists for different readers." For example, books suitable for reading at different stages of growth; different reading preferences, favorite books; different learning needs, suitable books. ”

He said that relying on the library's "wisdom brain", the library can change from a passive service for readers to provide readers with targeted book recommendations to provide readers with active services to guide readers to read more good books.

In addition, the epidemic is also catalyzing the digital services of libraries, with the help of digital technology, the service and temperature of libraries can break through the barriers of the epidemic and deliver warmth to the hearts of every reader.

During the epidemic period, Luo Zhenhuan, a staff member of the Guangming District Library, organized an online book club activity through the "Guangming Digital Culture Reading Platform" mini program, listing the library's recommended books, so that the readers of the library can also read, communicate and share online during the epidemic prevention and control period. He said that digital means can break through the barrier of the epidemic and narrow the distance between libraries and readers, and big data in the background can further analyze the reading needs of readers, provide more refined services, and make library services more warm.

Build inclusive libraries and improve the level of public cultural services in cities

The story of migrant worker Wu Guichun and Dongguan Library reflects the significance of public libraries to ordinary people and to a city, and also triggers people's thinking about the function and value of public libraries. The last time people paid much attention to the issue of public libraries, it was Chu Shuqing, the director of the Hangzhou Library, who refused the request of readers and let beggars and scavengers enter the library. He replied: "I have no right to refuse them admission, but you have the right to choose to leave." ”

Fan Hesi, a professional scholar of the library, said that every society needs some such public spaces, there is no threshold, generally no fee, no qualification review is required, and every member of the society can enter with confidence and obtain resources and support within a certain range. He believes that such public spaces are extremely important, and they are "urban beacons" that promote social inclusion.

The Argentine poet Borges said, "If there is heaven, heaven should look like a library." Obviously, a public library that embraces migrant workers, beggars and homeless people is the public and public welfare attribute that a public library should have, and it is also a yardstick to measure the temperature of the city.

On the second floor of the Guangming District Library, a 24-hour self-service library is being built to light a light and leave a foothold for the builders of the city.

Looking back at history, modern public libraries were born in England in the mid-nineteenth century with the original intention of serving industrial workers and giving everyone equal access to knowledge. Shenzhen is the city with the largest inflow of foreign population in China, and its importance of improving the level of urban public cultural services and serving every city builder is self-evident, while public libraries are the main supply side of public cultural products and services, and its importance is more prominent.

How to improve the function and role of public libraries in urban public cultural services? The Guangming District Library has explored the first place and taken the lead in solving the problem with digital construction. Taking the 24-hour book pavilion as an example, the Guangming District Library has laid out 71 24-hour book pavilions in the whole district, providing cultural facilities for the public with free services such as self-help, interconnection, 24-hour book lending, book return, application for reader cards, and book appointments, so that the library's services are closer to the citizens.

The 24-hour Book Pavilion data center and monitoring center are located in the Guangming District Library, and the operation team provides all-weather services through various technical means to respond to and deal with various business needs. "Through the analysis of big data, we can accurately grasp the reading needs of readers in various areas and provide more accurate services." At the same time, the idle books in each book pavilion are efficiently dispatched. Chen Jiawei, head of the 24-hour book pavilion of the Guangming District Library, said.

The "14th Five-Year Plan for the Construction of the Public Cultural Service System" points out that public cultural services are still lagging behind in digitalization, networking and intelligent construction compared with other fields. It is proposed to expand the intelligent application scenarios of public cultural services. Relying on a new generation of information technology such as cloud computing, big data, artificial intelligence, and blockchain, strengthen cloud data mining and analysis capabilities, promote public libraries and cultural centers (stations) to achieve intelligent operations including smart services, smart analytics, smart evaluation, and auxiliary decision-making, and optimize data feedback models.

As the highland of China's digital economy development, Shenzhen's digital exploration of the Guangming District Library is embarking on a "pioneering demonstration road".

Written by: Nandu reporter Cheng Yang