中国近代图书馆事业的社会起源

The Social Origins of Modern Librarianship in China

从1840年林则徐翻译《四洲志》到1912年京师图书馆开馆是中国近代图书馆事业的起源阶段。"明确中国近代图书馆事业社会起源"是图书馆史教学的核心。文章以史料为考察对象,采用文献调查法展开质化分析,梳理中国近代图书馆事业萌芽和初创阶段中的重要历史事件、人物,并以此为线索展开进一步分析。文章从中国近代图书馆事业起源的社会推动力量、社会变革环境、社会演变路径和社会存在意义等角度分析发现:中国近代图书馆事业的社会起源及直接推动其发展的是中国近代化变革;面向全社会诉求的维新派成为中国近代图书馆事业形成与发展的真正推动者;近代图书馆事业的发展是一个自下而上、偶然性与必然性相结合的过程;彼时的社会公众需要图书馆来开智,中国近代图书馆的社会起源是近代中国社会的变革需求并受其推动。

From Lin Zexu’s translation of The Encyclopaedia of Geography in 1840 to the official opening of the Capital Library in 1912,Chinese librarianship was developing rapidly.In the meantime,social forces from different social classes were emerging,reinforcing each other and jointly accelerating the development of librarianship in China.The social origins of library development in this period,as well as the relationship between needs of the society and library development,have gradually attracted the scholarly attention.In this paper,the authors use historical materials as the object of investigation,employ literature survey method and conduct qualitative analysis on the contents of these historical materials.The important historical events and characters in the budding and early stages of modern libraries in China are identified and analyzed.From the four perspectives of directions of social forces,the environment of social changes,paths of social evolution and the meaning of social existence,it is concluded that the modernization of China had given rise to modern Chinese librarianship and directly facilitated its development.The reformists who responded to the demand of the whole society became the patrons of the formation and development of modern librarianship in China.Modern libraries in China were growing from the bottom up.At the same time,the social origins of modern Chinese librarianship were the combination of natural and inevitable factors.In other words,the general public at that time needed a social institution to open their mind.Modern Chinese librarianship is the result of such needs and the catalyst for change in modern Chinese society.