Longyan Library

Longyan Library

Longyan Library is a comprehensive public library. It is a non-profit social institution that collects, organizes, preserves, develops, and utilizes cultural resources such as books, newspapers, periodicals, audiovisual materials, microfilms, electronic publications, and online information to serve the general public. It is also the center in Longyan City for literature collection and utilization, information consulting, interlibrary collaboration, and the development of library operations and research.

In June 1956, with the approval of the Fujian Provincial Department of Culture, the library room of the Longyan County Cultural Center was expanded into the Longyan County Library. The library was located in two storefronts on the east side of the Zhongshan West Road Mass Theater, covering an area of 108 square meters with a collection of 5,222 volumes. After 1958, the Longyan County Library moved to No. 29 Zhongshan Middle Road, with a building area of 1,400 square meters and a collection of 197,600 volumes. In the autumn of 1998, due to the needs of old city redevelopment, the Longyan Library was demolished. With high attention and strong support from both the municipal and district governments, construction of the new Longyan Library began in 2001 and was officially inaugurated in September 2004. The new site is located on the left side of the Cultural Square on Xinan Road, covering an area of 1,682 square meters, with a building area of 13,390 square meters and eight floors, at a total investment of 26 million yuan. Floors two through seven house the library’s operational departments, including a children’s reading room, current newspaper reading room, back issue newspapers and periodicals reading room, periodicals reading room, new book lending room, social sciences lending room, natural sciences lending room, acquisition and cataloging department, local materials room, rural book exchange center, special collections storage, comprehensive book and materials reading room, electronic reading room, and the Longyan demonstration site of China’s Cultural Information Resource Sharing Project—totaling fourteen operational sections. There are 1,500 reading seats and a collection of 300,000 volumes (including 70,000 back issues of newspapers and magazines), with weekly opening hours of 51 hours. The library has a staff of 26, including 5 with bachelor’s degrees, 11 with associate degrees, 2 with senior professional titles, 7 with intermediate titles, and 6 with junior titles. The director, Du Rongshu, holds a senior professional title and authored the paper “Thoughts on Building a Local Characteristic Library in Western Fujian,” published in the “Fujian Library Journal 2004(4).” The deputy director, Chen Hongyan, holds an intermediate professional title and wrote the paper “Reader Psychology and Library Consulting Work,” published in the Jilin-based “Library Theory and Practice 2002(6).” Cong Lina, also with a senior professional title, authored the paper “On the Digitization of Literature and Information Resources Construction in County (District)-Level Library Collections,” which won the “Second Prize in the 2005 First Directors’ Forum Essay Competition of the Chinese Library Society.”

The library was awarded the title of “National Second-Class Library” by the Ministry of Culture of China in both 1992 and 1998, and in 1995, it received the title of “Advanced Library” in the third Fujian Provincial Public Library “Strive for Advanced Libraries” evaluation.

To establish an automated library management system, the Xinluo District Government allocated 1.5 million yuan to purchase top-tier hardware and software equipment: a Fujitsu storage system disk array, Cisco switches, Dell servers, and 75 computer terminals. The library also created its official website (www.lytsg.com). Internally, the library uses ILAS (II) library management software and MARC Chinese book database machine-readable catalogs for management. Since its opening three years ago, it has received widespread praise from readers.

Address: Cultural Square, Xinan Road, Xinluo District, Longyan City