sept06b.indd


conference circuit 

Martha Kruy 

The China Mission 
Academic librarians embrace the People to People Ambassador Program 

This article is dedicated to Marcia Grimes, reference librarian from Wheaton College, 
who passed away in Xian, China, while par­
ticipating in the People to People Ambassador 
Program for academic librarians to China. Her 
determination to contribute to the mission 
was representative of all the Chinese and 
American delegates who contributed to the 
success of the mission. 

In March 2006, People to People Ambas­
sadors Program sent 22 academic librarians 
to China with the purpose of exchanging 
concerns and ideas for the future of academic 
librarianship on an international basis, and, 
in the process, building a better relationship 
between Chinese and American academic 
institutions. People to People Ambassador 
Program was founded by former U.S. Presi­
dent Dwight D. Eisenhower to promote his 
philosophy that “ordinary citizens of differ­
ent nations, if able to communicate directly, 
would solve their differences and find a way 
to live in peace . . . that while we are all very 
different, our values, goals, and day­to­day 
issues are very much the same.” 

So it was with this basic mission to experi­
ence our profession under the influences of a 
foreign culture that we stood on the precipice 
of the unknown, in a communist country, 
unsure about our hosting institutions’ desire 
to interact with us. 

Our delegation was led by Camila A. Alire 
and Polly Thistlethwaite and represented 
virtually every region of the United States, all 
sizes and many types of academic institutions 
and subjects of research, including a com­
munity college. Our group included a library 
director from Quebec, Canada, as well as an 

electronic database vendor executive (who is 
also an academic librarian). 

We arrived with many questions about the 
Chinese academic libraries, which included 
queries about their experiences with the (then) 
newly instituted presence of Google in their 
colleges and universities; their concerns about 
copyright law with respect to the Million Books 
Digitization project; and the role of librarians 
in their higher education institutions. 

While these questions were universally 
applicable—we had compared our own ex­
periences among the group informally during 
the 17­hour flight to China from Los Angeles— 
there was certain trepidation towards raising 
many of these concerns with professionals 
working under a communist government that 
had only recently begun to re­enter relation­
ships with the “western world.” 

History and culture 
In order to understand the culture with which 
we were to interact, we needed a basic un­
derstanding of Chinese history and culture. 
Briefly, throughout China’s long history of dy­
nastic rule, collections of information in scrolls, 
books, or the minds of the intellectuals (the 
Mandarins) were generally highly regarded 
by the emperors; however, each emperor 
demanded that the country follow his wisdom 
and understanding of the world. Therefore 
each new emperor would have the libraries 

Martha Kruy is adjunct reference librarian at Fairfield 
University and College of Mount St. Vincent, e-mail: 
mjkruymls@yahoo.com. 

© 2006 Martha Kruy 

September 2006  505 C&RL News 

mailto:mjkruymls@yahoo.com


People to People delegates to China, and their counterparts, at 
Northwest University. 

burned or otherwise destroyed in order to 
make room for new collections of informa­
tion that his intellectuals published. After the 
communist government replaced the feudal 
system, the intellectuals themselves were 
“reprogrammed” in what could be defi ned 
as labor camps during the Cultural Revolu­
tion because they were now considered the 
creators and sustenance of the cultural, social, 
and economic inequalities. 

Throughout its history, China has main­
tained a social wall between itself and the 
western world, which it has often perceived 
as uncivilized and slow to develop culturally. 
All of this background information explained a 
good amount of the responses we were about 
to receive to our questions during each discus­
sion with our Chinese counterparts. 

In contrast to Spartan, somewhat dilapi­
dated reading rooms and computer laborato­
ries, our Chinese library hosts were far from 
the aloof bureaucrats one would think had 
created such a forbidding environment. The 
cultural underpinnings of a strident desire to 
please and impress their guests in combination 
with a competitive spirit existed throughout 
each discussion, leaving the American delega­
tion with subtle understandings of how our 
Chinese counterparts envisioned the future of 
their roles in the academic institutions as well 
as how Google and copyright law might fi t into 
their definition of information literacy. 

While many smaller American colleges 
and universities are just beginning to consider 
purchasing the equipment to digitize special 

collections, most of the 
institutions that we visit­
ed in China had already 
digitized at least a small 
portion of their regular 
collection. At the Library 
of Chinese Academy 
of Sciences, we were 
given two presentations 
on digitized collections, 
one of which was acces­
sible via the Internet. 
Presenters had both an 
air of pride in their tech­

nological capabilities and curiosity as to how 
they measured up to “American standards” of 
academic excellence. 

Common publishing issues 
The academic issues caused by students’ 
misuse of Google and other open Internet 
sources were agreed upon by both the Chi­
nese and American academic librarians. The 
fact that information literacy must include 
proper researching skills of electronic infor­
mation appears to be a universal priority for 
the academic library staff. In fact many of the 
Chinese college and university libraries offered 
various forms of information literacy sessions, 
including formal classes in proper research­
ing skills. Copyright laws were also in place 
for research authors whereby ownership of a 
particular work is granted for 50 years after the 
document was written or until the author died, 
whereupon the work transferred to public 
domain. An American concern with publish­
ers’ ownership of an author’s work does not 
exist in China because of agreements between 
authors and publishing companies that return 
ownership of a publication to the author after 
a period of years after original publication. 

Yet another publishing issue that was 
shared by both countries was the “publish or 
perish” concern on the part of the academic 
library faculty. While the Chinese academic 
librarians would not necessarily lose their jobs 
if they did not publish research papers, they 
certainly would never receive job promotions 
or pay bonuses. Although this standard does 

C&RL News September 2006  506 



not coincide completely with the experiences 
of many American academic librarians, it is 
also part of a culture that is experiencing 
dramatic changes on a regular basis. 

During our discussion at the Renmin Uni­
versity, we learned that China has a dearth of 
experienced academic librarians and is in the 
process of educating undergraduate students 
in library and information sciences. This fact 
coincided with the American academic library 
concern with future waves of retiring librarians 
leaving the profession and academic library an 
uncertain future. 

In fact the current role of the academic 
librarian was agreed upon by both the Chi­
nese and American delegations to be in a 
constant state of transition in comparison to 
the traditional job definitions by either culture. 
Whereas the original role of librarian was to 

collect, organize, preserve and provide ac­
cess to the information resources, today one 
is expected to also teach students and faculty 
how to access those resources, evaluate, and 
use the information discovered through the 
search process. 

A satisfying mission 
The vast collection of information—both in­
ferred and stated—acquired by the academic 
librarians of the People to People Ambassador 
Program to China is too extensive to report 
word for word in the length of a single article. 
In fact, the details of each discussion and 
meeting between the Chinese and American 
librarians have been published in journal for­
mat for future reference. The mission of this 
delegation to open channels of communication 

(continues on page 524) 

(“The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy,” 
continued from page 504) 
to bring about fundamental change in the 
system of scholarly communication.” 

2. Karen Williams, “The ACRL Scholarly 
Communications Toolkit now online,” C&RL 
News, 66, no. 3 (2005): “The Web­based 
ACRL Scholarly Communications Toolkit is 
designed to support advocacy efforts that 
work towards changing the scholarly com­
munication system.” 

3. “Principles and Strategies for the Re­
form of Scholarly Communication,” prepared 
by the ACRL Scholarly Communications 
Committee, at www.ala.org/ala/acrl/acrlpubs 
/whitepapers/principlesstrategies.htm. 

4. “Principles and Strategies.” 
5. We don’t allow authors to put copies on 

unaffiliated servers. The reasons for this are: 
1) Changes could be made to the version on 
the other server without going through our 
referee process. This undermines the “impri­
matur” of SEP (authors might add content to 
the other version that was not acceptable to 
our referees, and people wouldn’t necessarily 
know what the differences are between the 
two versions). 2) There would no longer be 
a single stable citation path—each non­affi li­
ated server which serves the entry introduces 

a new citation path. People might not know 
which of these is the official version, and it 
introduces confusion as to the provenance 
of the piece. 

Finally, it should be noted that republica­
tion of Web materials is not the same as re 
publication of print materials. The republi­
cation of print materials really does make 
them more accessible, since copies become 
distributed in places they might not have 
been distributed before. However, everyone 
on the Web can access our servers and our 
three mirror sites, which are available at all 
times and which have backup systems that 
ensure the long­term preservation of SEP 
content. 

6. Additionally, the NEH Division of Pres­
ervation and Access (PA) has given the SEP 
project a grant that partially covers operating 
costs as the project increasingly lives off its 
endowment. NEH/PA will provide $100,000 
for operating costs for 2005–06, and $50,000 
in costs for 2006–07. The Stanford Admin­
istration (provost, dean of humanities and 
sciences, dean of research) has also pledged 
$75,000 in operating costs for 2005–06, and 
2006–07 years, and $25,000 for 2007–08. By 
that time, SEP should be living off its pro­
tected operating fund. 

September 2006  507 C&RL News 

www.ala.org/ala/acrl/acrlpubs