China to Build Large Digital Library

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Last updated at: (Beijing Time) Tuesday, April 02, 2002

China to Build Large Digital Library

With an investment of over one billion yuan, China is planning a basic project for the construction of a large digital library, thereby further enlarging the National Library up to 250,000 square meters, ranking the third in the world.

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Library under second phase construction

The second phase of the National Library and concurrently the basic project of the National Digital Library had already been approved by the State Council to put in a file on October 31 of last year. And it was listed as a key project of the country for the 10th Five-year Plan Period.

The whole project includes the second phase of the National Library and the basic project of the National Digital Library. It is to be located by the north of the present one, covering an area of 22,000 square meters but with a total floor space of over 70,000 square meters. The main building contains around 12 storeys with a total investment of RMB 1.2 billion-yuan. And when the second phase of the project is completed it will help increase a collection capacity of over 12 million volumes and daily reception of readers will be increased to 7,000 - 9,000 person/times.

According to the feasibility report the digital resources of the national library at present have reached 800GB (1GB equivalent to 500 million Chinese characters). The coming digital library will comprise of the processing center for digitalization of documents and literature, the processing center of digital resources, the accessing control center of digital resources, the network controlling center, the service center of digital resources, the system exploration and maintenance center, the digital library development and study center, the exhibition of digital library and the training center, a total of eight sectors.

With regard to the software, nine special software systems are to be set up, including the special software for protection of copyrights and for safety authentication. In accordance with the initial prediction the PC needed for the library come to over 1,300 sets and the resources of the digital library in future will come to 20TB (1TB equals 1024GB).

According to anticipation, the second phase of the National Library and the basic project of the National Digital Library will come to an end by Oct.31, 2005. This will make the total area of the library up to 250,000 square meters, ranking the third in the world.

Experts Study National Library Extension Project

The National Library houses 23.11 million books, 3.11 million more than its designed capacity. Over 12,000 readers visit the library daily, well surpassing its capacity of 7,000. Many readers have to sit in the aisles when the number of visitors reach its peak during weekends and holidays.

Deputy Minister of Culture Zhou Heping said that building a digital library is extremely important for the development of Chinese libraries as a whole. "It is a grand project of the nation," he said. "The national digital library will set a framework for other libraries in the country, thereby preventing the construction of redundant projects."

Zhang Bo, an academician of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, said, "The new library will help satisfy demands of all kinds. We have scant electronic Chinese resources at the moment, when 90 percent of the electronic scientific literature is in foreign languages."

Chen Jiyue, a senior engineer at IPPR Engineering International, which is responsible for the plan, said that the extension will be carried out on a lot north of the present library, with state investment. He added that the library will hold a public bidding for the two projects after the plan is approved by the government.

The National Library will hold an international symposium on digital libraries in July, which representatives from the British Library and the US Library of Congress will attend.

By People's Daily Online

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