Historical Evolution of the Library of Northwest A&F University

The development history of the library of Northwest A&F University can be traced back to 1934. With the establishment in Yangling of the first agricultural institution of higher learning in northwest China, the National Northwest Agricultural College, the predecessor of the former Northwest Agricultural University, the library of this university also began its difficult pioneering course. At the beginning of the building, there were only seven staff members, and the building area was several hundred square meters. The collection of books was only over 4 volumes received from the library of the National Labor University (Shanghai) and the library of its Agricultural College, and the facilities in the library were very simple. In the following decades, In Yangling area, the former Northwest Institute of Agricultural Sciences of Shaanxi Academy of Agricultural Sciences (1952), the former Northwest Hydraulic Research Institute (1954), the former Northwest Institute of Agricultural Biology of China Academy of Sciences (1956), the former Northwest Institute of Botany of China Academy of Sciences (1965), the former Northwest Forestry College (198) and the former Shaanxi Forestry Research Institute were successively born. In 1999, with the merger of two universities and five scientific research institutes to form the new Northwest A&F University, the library of Northwest A&F University, which was formed by the merger of seven units' library and information institutions, was formally born. The National Northwest Agricultural and Forestry College was established in 1932. In April, 1934, the National Government held the foundation stone laying ceremony of the teaching building at the site of Zhangjiagang, Wugong, Shaanxi, announcing the establishment of the first agricultural institution of higher learning in northwest China. The library also entered the preparatory stage during this period.

in the spring of p>1932, the Agricultural College of (Shanghai) National Labor University was closed by the order of the National Government. At the right time, the Central Political Conference passed the initial plan for the construction of northwest special education, that is, the farm and some books and instruments of the Agricultural College of Labor University were allocated to the National Northwest Agricultural and Forestry College. Due to the loss during transportation, only 451 books handed over by the library of National Labor University (Shanghai) and the library of its Agricultural College were initially accepted.

in August, 1935, Mr. Li Yizhi moved the special water conservancy course he founded in Shaanxi Provincial High School (Xi 'an) in 1932 to the National Northwest Agricultural and Forestry College, and brought back a batch of books and periodicals.

In p>1936, the National Northwest Agricultural and Forestry College officially enrolled students, with Professor Xin Shuzhi as the principal. During his tenure as principal, he had the saying of "three treasures". It is mainly to grasp three things: first, to hire famous professors; second, to enrich books and instruments; third, to find a way out for students after graduation. At the beginning of the school, the funds were relatively sufficient, and Professor Xin Shuzhi paid more attention to saving money. Most of the funds were used to buy books and instruments. Once, I personally went to Peiping to buy books and instruments at that time, and the expenses amounted to as much as 1, yuan.

in July p>1936, the library was officially opened. The school appointed Mr. Huang Lianqin as the director of the library and five other employees. At the same time, the Library's Reading and Borrowing Rules was published in Northwest Agriculture and Forestry (First Issue). At that time, the school had only 18 faculty members and 11 students.

In the same year, the school established the Library Committee and the Purchase Committee, and Huang Lianqin was also a member of the two committees. In December of the same year, the number of library staff reached 9. The library covers an area of 561 square meters and has a stack room and two reading rooms.

In p>1937, the teaching building of Northwest Agriculture and Forestry College (the former Agricultural College Building) was completed, and the library moved to the southeast corner of the first floor, which greatly increased the building area.

In p>1938, the library received 87 Chinese books handed over by the former Xi 'an Temporary University. During this period, the library not only purchased some books, but also received a batch of books presented by President Xin Shuzhi and professors and scholars such as Shi Shenghan, Fu Sinian and Gu Jiegang. In order to avoid war damage, the school moved some important books to Mian County in southern Shaanxi for storage.

In April, 1939, the National Northwest Agriculture and Forestry College merged with the Agricultural College of the National Northwest United University and the Department of Animal Husbandry and Veterinary Medicine of the Agricultural College of Henan University to form the National Northwest Agricultural College, with about 25 faculty members. With the establishment of the National Northwest Agricultural College, the library was renamed as the National Northwest Agricultural College Library. At that time, there were a stack room for 15, books and a 6-seat mixed reading room, one for back issues and one for thread-bound stacks. In addition, the library also purchased a full set of Guowen Weekly, the first and second episodes of Oriental Magazine and Wanyou Library, and one of Four Series and Four Reserves is being edited. At this time, the library has collected 473 books.

During the period of War of Resistance against Japanese Aggression, the school was in an unstable state for a long time, and the personnel of the library changed frequently, and the work made no progress. At that time, although some anti-Japanese propaganda books were received and purchased, they were often imprisoned by "banning" and "sealing up". During 194-1941, Japanese aggressors bombed schools three times, killing and injuring many students. The agricultural college building where the library is located (that is, teaching building No.3 today) was also shot several times, and some buildings suffered considerable damage.

From p>1945 to the victory of the Anti-Japanese War, the library has accepted three batches of books donated by foreign countries, and supplemented several periodicals that were lacking during the War of Resistance against Japanese Aggression period.

On May 2th, 1949, the school was liberated. At this time, there are 41,77 books in the library, including 1,676 bound volumes of periodicals.

Before the founding of New China, the library, as the pillar of teaching and scientific research in the school, experienced war and harassment, but with the concerted efforts of teachers and students, the books and materials in the library were preserved relatively completely and managed in a scientific way. For example, the classification adopts Dewey Decimal Classification and China Decimal Classification, which all create better conditions for the future development of libraries. The development of the library in this period is mainly manifested as follows: first, the number of collected documents increased sharply. In 1978, the total number of collected documents exceeded 52,, an increase of 13 times compared with 1949; Second, the role and position of the library as an academic institution of teaching and scientific research services in the school are clarified, and at the same time, the library business organization is established and improved, and various management systems are formulated; Third, the standardized management of the basic business of the library has been realized, and the business and service have been deepened and the scope has been expanded; Fourth, the completion of independent libraries has created conditions for comprehensively improving the library's document support capacity. Although there was stagnation in the library during 1966-197, the general trend of continuous development and growth of the library has not changed fundamentally. Rapid development stage (195-1966) After the founding of New China, with the recovery and development of the national economy and the continuous increase of state investment in higher education, domestic colleges and universities have also developed rapidly. In the early days of liberation, there were only 68 faculty members in Northwest Agricultural College. By the end of 1966, the number of faculty members had grown to 1,169. The number of students in school increased from 585 in the early days of liberation to 2,194 in the early 196s.

with the rapid expansion of the school scale, the library has entered the first period of rapid development. In 1956, the total collection was nearly 17, volumes; In 1961, the total collection reached more than 258, volumes; In 1965, the total collection reached more than 31, volumes, and the staff of the whole library increased from 6 in the early days of liberation to 32.

At the same time, the library's business management and theoretical research have also made great progress. Among them, the Book Classification, edited and published by Fan Shiwei, a library in the 195s, has a certain influence in the domestic library circle. The "Chinese Pinyin Author Number List" (namely "copybook author number list") has been adopted by some libraries inside and outside the province; In 1954, Xin Shuzhi, the president, invited more than ten teachers to participate, and established the "Research Group on the Agricultural Heritage of the Motherland" in the library, which was later renamed the "Ancient Agricultural Research Room" to carry out research on agricultural history by using a batch of ancient agricultural literature resources in the library. In addition, the library's bibliographic indexing in the 196s also achieved remarkable service results.

in may, 1951, the library set up a director to manage the library affairs, and a director librarian assisted the director in handling the library affairs. There were four parts: cataloging, cashier, reading and periodical, with five librarians in charge and two workers assisting the work. There is also a library; 1 mixed reading room, connected with stacks, displaying 2 periodicals; 1 reference room with 2 books; 1 periodical and newspaper storage room and 1 public newspaper reading office.

in p>1956, according to the spirit of the national symposium on library work in colleges and universities and the relevant regulations of the Ministry of education, the school strengthened its leadership over the library, and changed the original library from the academic affairs office to a vice president. In January 1957, the school decided to change the library into a department-level unit directly led by the vice president, and Wang Zhenhua, the vice president, also served as the librarian. The position and function of library in school teaching and scientific research have been established and continue to this day.

in p>1957, the library Committee was formally established in our school. Most of the members of the library Committee were composed of well-known experts and professors at that time. The Committee was mainly responsible for the development and construction of the library and other major issues.

In the same year, an office was set up in the library. Under the office, there were three groups of interview, cataloging and circulation reading, as well as reference book reading room, periodical reading room, political book reading room, teacher reading room and microscopic copy reading room, and literary books were borrowed open-shelf. Some basic rules and regulations of the library have been formulated, such as book lending rules, reading rules of reading rooms and the use of periodicals and student reference books. At the same time, the school decided to change the previous allocation of book funds by department to unified management and use by the library.

in the winter of p>1964, the new library building was completed, and Mr. Guo Moruo, then president of China Academy of Sciences, wrote the name of the library. Located in the center of the campus, the new building consists of three parts: the main building, the side building and the annex building, with a total area of 81 square meters. With the completion and use of the new museum, the conditions of the embassy premises have been greatly improved, the area has increased by 15 times compared with that before liberation, all the facilities in the museum have been updated, and the number of staff has also increased to 23. The new library building * * * has set up 1 reading rooms for various specialties, 3 general reading rooms and 87 reading seats. At the beginning of 1965, all the libraries moved into the new building, and the opening ceremony was held on February 28th. Chen Wuyu, secretary of the Party Committee of the Academy, gave important instructions on the future work of the library at the opening ceremony. In order to improve teachers' reading and learning environment, the school equipped all the teachers' reading rooms in the new building with leather soft chairs, which was the best configuration for office study in the whole college at that time. Stagnant stage of work (1966-197) The "Cultural Revolution" movement that began in 1966 brought a catastrophe to the country, and the library was inevitably affected. At the beginning of the "Cultural Revolution", except for an elderly comrade, the rest of the staff were mostly sent to the "May 7th" cadre school to take part in labor. Fortunately, because the library is an independent building, it has not been greatly impacted, and books, periodicals, materials and other collection resources are well preserved. In the stage of recovery and development (1971-1978), according to the instructions of the Central Publishing Symposium and the National Education Conference in 1971, the library staff returned from the May 7th Cadre School one after another. The main task of library work in this period is to sort out and resume professional work, and it has become one of the university libraries that resumed library work earlier in China.

in p>1971, in order to welcome the arrival of the first new students of workers, peasants and soldiers, the library sorted out more than 3, books collected and more than 8, books accepted by the former Shaanxi University of Technology. At the same time, some rules and regulations were revised, seven reading rooms were arranged, the ordering and collection of books and periodicals were resumed, and all the preparations for the resumption of opening were completed. From 1974 to 1976, Chaoyang Agricultural College opened its school, and the library set up a working group on off-campus teaching bases, which was responsible for sending books to the off-campus bases and to the stations.

In p>1978, the library adjusted the organization in the library, and the publicity and reporting group was changed to the publicity and consulting group; The periodical reading room is transferred to the management of the newspaper group; The "science and technology information room" of the scientific research department is placed under the unified leadership of the library; Internal books were changed to be managed by the circulation group. At the same time, a reading room for foreign periodicals is added to implement open-shelf reading; Add consulting projects, set up special personnel to be responsible for organizing answering questions and searching documents on behalf of others. At the same time, it also established and compiled periodicals on information such as Scientific and Technological Information Reference, Foreign Scientific and Technological Information, Scientific and Technological Information and Book Newsletter. At the same time, the publication of China Library Classification marks the beginning of standardization of library business in China. Libraries uniformly use the Chinese Library Classification to classify Chinese and foreign books and materials, and gradually realize standardized management of various business work and develop rapidly.

from April to may, 1974, the library carried out a comprehensive revision and inspection of the list of Chinese pinyin authors. At that time, libraries inside and outside the province demanded more, so after printing, it was sent to more than 32 libraries all over the country, which had a great influence among peers in the country. During this period, due to the rapid recovery of library work, the service for readers has been greatly expanded and achieved remarkable results, which have been interviewed by CCTV and reported by Guangming Daily. With the title of "Paving the way for teaching and scientific research —— Recording the Library of Northwest Agricultural College", Shaanxi Daily reported on the library's "enthusiastic service, consulting and solving problems, positioning reading, and seeing the spirit of books and new books". After the Third Plenary Session of the Eleventh Central Committee of the Communist Party of China, all kinds of business work in the library has been carried out in an all-round way, and scientific and technological information service has become an important part of library work, which has achieved remarkable results in the service and teaching of agricultural scientific and technological literature retrieval. The reform of library management and the application of automation technology have become the main characteristics of library development in this period.

1. Comprehensively promote the reform of management system and operation mechanism

In p>1979, Northwest Agricultural College was listed as a national key institution of higher learning. During this period, the school's work centered on teaching and scientific research quickly recovered and developed. According to the spirit of the Ministry of Education's "Opinions on Strengthening the Work of Books and Materials in Colleges and Universities", the library has carried out the reform of perfecting the decision-making mechanism of the library and setting up the system with departments and offices.

in July, 1979, the library consisted of three rooms and three groups, namely, office (including propaganda and consultation), editing group, circulation group, newspaper group, information reference room, and ancient agricultural research room. The directors of each room were appointed by the Party Committee of the school and were department-level cadres in the school.

In p>1982, the school resumed the establishment of the Library Committee as an advisory body for the library information work of the school. The members of the Committee include the dean in charge of library work, the librarian, the director of the office, and the deputy heads of departments or associate professors who care about library work. In November 1987, the new Library and Information Committee was established. The chairman is Professor Zhang Yue, the president, and the deputy director Feng Shiliang is the secretary.

With the deepening of school education reform, the teaching quality and scientific research level have been continuously improved. In order to meet the needs of the development of the situation, since 1987, the library has further accelerated the pace of reform, and has undergone fundamental changes in library management ideas and service concepts. The personnel management system with the post responsibility system as the core has been formed, which has promoted the development of various work in the library; In 1987, the school carried out all kinds of personnel allocation. In order to meet the needs of this situation, the library changed the previous business groups (rooms) into departments, and changed the similar ones.