A Study of the Development of Libraries in Modern Taiwan,1895-1981: Focusing on Public Libraries

• Main Authors: Ching-Hu Lin, 林慶弧
• Other Authors: Hsiu-Cheng Huang
• Format: Others
• Language: zh-TW
• Published: 2014
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/77608648019198481601

博士 === 中興大學 === 歷史學系所 === 103 === Libraries are the product of civilization from thousands of years ago. They play different roles in different ages, however, the main function which is ordering knowledge and information and inheriting cultures has been the same. Besides, libraries are the symbol of cultural business. The way it goes up or down reflects political, economic and socially classical situation of a nation. Libraries are the very important index to evaluate a civilized nation. This article is about a historical research of library development in modern Taiwan. I put Taiwanese library business as a sequence of Taiwanese historical development, and make the business as an individual subject to be analyzed. It is found that how libraries developed relates to the political, social, economic, and cultural situation of a nation. The whole environment influences even more on the operational ideas, administrational system, and concreted execution of developing libraries. When the time Taiwan was governed under Ching Dynasty, we knew that there were no library conceptions and facilities in the Han society like those in the western society based on the understanding of officially compiled annals of local history. Only the book collections from Confucianism or an academy of classical learning regarded as sort of libraries. In the modern times of Taiwan, library development started from Japanese ruled period. At the first beginning of the period, the civil proposed to establish libraries. It was the origin of Taiwanese library business. The main idea of the library in this time was to transform social traditions. The purpose of running library was to promote local education and to inspire folks’ intelligence. Later of the time, the authority set up “Library of Taiwanese Presidential Palace”. It was the only one library governed directly under Presidential Palace. It was filled with sufficient resources in human, finance, and collections, and became the most well established library gradually. It also held an important position of counselling libraries all around Taiwan. It could be called the center of Taiwanese libraries. It was thought that libraries were an effective social educational tool in the post Japanese ruled period. The background of the purpose by building libraries’ facilities as social education was to colonize the society and to use libraries as cultural political tool of Japanese Imperialism The first beginning of postwar, Taiwan was situated under the policies of “de-Japanimation” and “in-Sinicization”, there were problems for re-establishing libraries like budget–short, librarian-supply, and organization-subordination. It went through comprehensive consideration and scheme, but only focused on receiving buildings and destroying Japanese collections. There were no practical steps or programs for follow-up administration. This caused potential hard breaking through difficulties and crisis by running Taiwanese libraries after. The library development of the time was the worst and no contribution. After Korean War, the dispirited library business was at the stage of transform and key development for American support. It gained a great deal of financial support and American advisors. The most important key point was to help holding library workshop and to develop professional education of library. The last was the long-term influence to Taiwanese library business. What had done during the time American support was to store energy to Taiwanese library growing for next step. It was the first stage work of post cultural establishments and made stable foundations. It could be the biggest transition and change in history of Taiwanese library business. With establishing Chinese library associate, re-opening National Central Library in Taiwan, and reviving movements of Chinese culture, the cultural administration of Taiwan at this time frame was basically going with government’s policies which were counterattacking and reviving Chinese culture. The cultural development was deeply controlled and influenced by the government. In 1970’s, when the time Chiang, Ching-Kuo was the premier, he completed the ten major construction projects and kept promoting the twelve major construction projects. The twelfth project was cultural establishments and focused on libraries. Cultural centers were built in every county and city. The core of cultural establishments was building libraries expanding in hardware and software from the central government to the local governments. This was regarded as a new milestone of Taiwanese library business. After, building libraries developed further to the basic level, to further away, and to village and town levels which needed libraries. It presented the prosperity of Taiwanese library business and a new expecting opportunity. Running library business is not a temporary hard construction; it is a long-term and sustainable investment, a continually long-range cultural business. Finally, this research addresses that it needs to be in accord with every subjective and objective situation to develop Taiwanese library business sustainably. For outside objective situations, the government has to make mature policies of developing libraries and to provide stable and sufficient budget-support. General people like to use the information from libraries for the atmosphere of libraries made by the whole social environment. For the subjective situations, libraries become important institution with feature collections to provide all service and professional information as core value through professional librarians’ good attitudes and in proper buildings for running libraries sustainably to upgrade culture and to promote social education.