China to promote building of national digital library network

BEIJING, May 31 (Xinhua) -- China will launch a national project to promote the building of a digital library network in the next five years.

The project aims to build a nationwide digital library network with the National Digital Library of China at the center, integrating local libraries, said a statement jointly issued by the Ministry of Culture and the Ministry of Finance on Tuesday.

The focus of the project will be promoting the construction of an interconnected digital library platform and a group of widely-spread resource libraries that provide multi-media library services for the public, the statement said.

The services will be available in public libraries and through the Internet, mobile phones and mobile televisions.

Over recent years, the construction of digital libraries has made technological advancements, and the promotional project is expected to increase the capability and capacity of the country's digital library services and improve the public culture services, said Zhou Heping, director of the National Library of China.

Zhou called for an emphasis on the planning, human-resource training, expenditure management and the building of an information sharing system during the promotion.

As of September last year, the digital resources maintained by the National Digital Library of China had reached 460 TB, with over 76 percent accessible across the country.

In February of last year, China launched a scheme to promote the building of digital libraries at the county level in a bid to equip the country's over 2,900 county-level libraries with digital services.