Digital Collection Development and Sharing on a National Scale: A Case Study of the Digital Library Promotion Project

Digital Library Promotion Project is a digital culture boosting project launched by the Ministry of Culture of the People's Republic of China with National Library of China as its implementing unit. The project aims to build a nation-wide library network that could support and guarantee resource development and sharing among public libraries all over China, so as to achieve equalization in public culture service among people from different parts of the country. This paper is a case study of digital collection development and sharing in a developing country where regional differences are large. The paper starts with the environmental scan of the resource situation of public libraries in China, which is the background and significance of the Digital Library Promotion Project(DLPP). The main part of the paper is the introduction and analysis of the collection developing method of the DLPP, including: union catalogue, co-construction of featured resources, Joint procurement of databases. Through analyzing the mechanism in collection development and sharing, this paper discusses the measures that guarantees the success of the project, these are: sustained financial support from the government, scientific mechanism for cooperation, unified standards in resource development and targeted training programs. The future development of the program is discussed at the end of the paper.