A Comparative Study On Community Library Services Between China And America

Community is a basic unit of society and community culture is the cornerstone of thesocio-cultural. As an important part of the community cultural institutions, communitylibrary can not only nurture the culture of community but also improve the quality of lifeof the residents. The community library construction increasingly brought to the attentionof the government and society. Some areas such as Beijing, Shanghai, Guangdong, theircommunity library construction has made great achievements. However, compared withthe America and other developed countries, there are many problems of communitylibrary service in China. In order to learn the advanced experience from foreigncommunity library services and solve the problems existing in our community libraryservices, the article made a comparative study on community library between China andAmerica.Based on the perspective of service, the article uses a lot of analysis methods such asdocument, survey, case and contrast. Comparaed to the developed community libraryservice system in America, our community library lacks of service concept, serviceresources, service content, etc. In view of these questions, this paper offers someproposals for updating service concept of community library, strengthening theconstruction of the community library service resources, deepening community libraryservices and improving the community’s library service system.The article is divided into four parts. The first part mainly introduces the currentsituation of research on service of community library in domestic and international. Thesecond chapter elaborates the service concept, the characteristic, significance and servicestatus of community library. The third part including chapter3, chapter4and chapter5,carries out the comparative study from three aspects: the service concept, serviceresources and service content of community library in China and America. Based on thecomparative study results of the third part, the fourth part puts forward some suggestionsto improve the service of community libraries in China.