Xiaoyi Yuan
505-Final Reflection Paper
Shared Problem:
Rural areas in China lag behind urban areas in the diffusion of public libraries. Almost all the
rural populations make their living by producing and selling agricultural productions. Lacking
access to agricultural knowledge, however, aggravates the poverty of rural areas and also leads to
inappropriate agricultural practices- the soil pollution and pesticides waste. The entertainment
demand of the population brings up by the tendency of surplus labor in rural areas is also call for the
effective diffusion of public rural libraries in China. For now, although the government appropriate
funds to build rural libraries, there is only a very small proportion of rural areas are equipped
with libraries. From 2005, some non-profit institutions and universities in China are founded to
foster the development of rural libraries by donating books and organizing volunteers. But those
institutions and universities have not covered most of the rural areas in China. The deployment
strategies and standardization of China’s rural libraries are still long-term tasks in the course of
developing rural areas.
Linda Garcia
Questions:
Non-profit institutions helped the diffusions of rural libraries by deploying “bottom-up” strategy,
i.e. using local resources. But the proportion of rural areas with local public libraries is still small.
What is the status quo of rural libraries funded by non-profit organizations in China? Can this strategy
fit into other rural areas and helps diffuse libraries in larger areas in China?
Method:
1. The theoretical structure: bottom-up and demand driven technology diffusion strategies.
The notion of building network in the deployment of innovations into rural areas.
2. Field study
3. Survey
Answer:
Xiaoyi Yuan
505-Final Reflection Paper
“Decision-makers in developing countries must create optimal conditions for the
productive use of these technologies and their incorporation into every day life.”1 The population
density of rural areas is much lower than that of urban areas. So the unit cost of diffusing new
infrastructures (libraries) is too high for Chinese government to afford. From around the year of
2005, some non-profit organizations started to donate books and fund rural libraries based on local
rural resources.
To evaluate the status quo of rural libraries funded by non-profit organizations. We do field
study to these rural libraries and interview local users of library. There are two ways to use local
resources in the diffusion process: local residents participate as librarians or in other management
positions and local schools (students, teachers and the school buildings) as the resources. By
interviewing people working in those libraries and doing field study to local schools, we can answer
questions like: which kind of roles that local residents play in the non-profit funded rural libraries,
are they enthusiasm about their work or how do they think working there, is the school resources are
adequate and do they have the necessity to cooperate with government? By answering these
questions, we can know whether using the local resources are universal for China rural areas, which
provide the possibility that the model of non-profit organization funding rural libraries can be
diffused into larger areas in China.
David Ribes
Questions:
China Rural Library (CRL) is one of the successful non-governmental institutions to fund and
build rural libraries in China, founded in 2007. The goal of CRL is to fund or build rural libraries
under the help of social donation and social volunteers. Infrastructure is built to last. CRL, as a
social institution infrastructure, how they successfully developed eleven rural library centers (every
1
D. Linda Garcia, Cooperative Networks and the Rural-Urban Divide, Digital Formations: IT
and New Architectures in the Global Realm, Princeton University Press, Sep 19, 2009
Xiaoyi Yuan
505-Final Reflection Paper
center manages several adjacent rural libraries) in this five years?
Method:
1. An Ethnographic and archival study of the past, present and future of CRL.
2. Borrow the ‘Kernel’ concept as the theoretical structure
Answer:
The ‘Kernel’ of CRL is consisted of Cache and Addressing. Cache means the resources and
services provided by the infrastructure. Addressing means the resources or tools that sustain its
services. Within CRL, Cache refers to volunteers, sites, books and money donation while
Addressing refers to the mechanism of fund raising, the human resource, book management and
other techniques that sustain CRL.
Enlightened by the method of Professor Ribes’ research on the research institution MACS and
LTER- the ethnographic and archival study method, I will evaluate and analyze the CRL by being
an observer in different centers of CRL, taking records about how they adopt themselves by
repurposing their plan for every next year, when their donation slowing down or when the Chinese
state/local government policy changes. Also, I can record throughout two years to figure out how
they recruit local and non-local volunteers, how they cooperate with local primary schools in order
to utilize local resources. When some books in one of the libraries founded by CRL was taken away
by local government last year because of political reasons, they started consider how to compromise
the requirement of government and their book selection. Within this example, CRL adjusted one of
the components of the Cache (book) to sustain CRL. And by observing those adjustment, we can
also figure out whether it is suitable for other rural library related non-profit institutions to maintain
their activities.