nov06b.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 Col­
lege, who passed away in Xian, China, while 
participating in the People to People Am­
bassador 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
sador Program sent 22 academic librarians to 
China with the purpose of exchanging con­
cerns 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 expe­
rience our profession under the infl uences 
of a foreign culture that we stood on the 
precipice of the unknown, in a communist 
country, unsure about our hosting institu­
tions’ 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 insti­
tutions and subjects of research, including 
a community college. Our group included 
a library director from Quebec, Canada, as 

well as an electronic database vendor execu­
tive (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 
experiences among the group informally 
during the 17­hour flight to China from Los 
Angeles—there was certain trepidation to­
wards raising many of these concerns with 
professionals working under a communist 
government that had only recently be­

Editor’s note 
This article originally ran in the Septem­
ber 2006 issue of C&RL News. Unfortu­
nately, the name of the article’s author 
did not appear at that time, and the article 
was inadvertently attributed to two other 
authors. Martha Kruy, a member of the 
People to People Ambassador Program 
academic library delegation, is the au­
thor of this article.We are rerunning the 
article here in its entirety with the proper 
authorship attribution.The editors regret 
the error. 

Martha Kruy is adjunct reference librarian at Fairfield 
University and College of Mount St. Vincent, e-mail: 
mjkruymls@yahoo.com. 
© 2006 Martha Kruy 

C&RL News November 2006  622 

mailto:mjkruymls@yahoo.com
http:article.We


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

gun to re­enter relationships with the “west­
ern 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 
dynastic rule, collections of information in 
scrolls, books, or the minds of the intellec­
tuals (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 burned or otherwise destroyed 
in order to make room for new collections 
of information that his intellectuals pub­
lished. 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 Revolution because they were now 
considered the creators and sustenance of 
the cultural, social, and economic inequali­
ties. 

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 cultur­
ally. All of this background information 
explained a good amount of the responses 
we were about to receive to our questions 
during each discussion with our Chinese 
counterparts. 

In contrast to 
Spartan, somewhat 
dilapidated read­
i n g  r o o m s  a n d  
computer labora­
tories, our Chinese 
library hosts were 
far from the aloof 
bureaucrats one 
would think had 
created such a for­
bidding environ­
ment. 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 delegation with subtle 
understandings of how our Chinese coun­
terparts envisioned the future of their roles 
in the academic institutions as well as how 
Google and copyright law might fit into their 
definition of information literacy. 

While many smaller American colleges 
and universities are just beginning to con­
sider purchasing the equipment to digitize 
special collections, most of the institutions 
that we visited in China had already digitized 
at least a small portion of their regular collec­
tion. At the Library of Chinese Academy of 
Sciences, we were given two presentations 
on digitized collections, one of which was 
accessible via the Internet. Presenters had 
both an air of pride in their technological 
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 

November 2006  623 C&RL News 



sessions, including formal classes in proper 
researching 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 publishers’ 
ownership of an author’s work does not 
exist in China because of agreements be­
tween 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 pa­
pers, they certainly would never receive job 
promotions or pay bonuses. Although this 
standard does 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 aca­
demic 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 librar­
ian was to collect, organize, preserve and 
provide access 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 (see www.ala.org/ala 
/acrl/acrlpubs/whitepapers/chinajournal. 
htm). The mission of this delegation to open 
channels of communication between aca­
demic librarians from the People’s Republic of 
China and the United States was accomplished 
with great enthusiasm by both delegations. 
The opportunity for a true world wide web 
of information was created by the open dis­
cussion of academic library issues and ideas, 
thereby permanently transfiguring the path 
of Chinese librarianship (in accepting other 
perspectives on information) and informing 
American librarians of worldwide advance­
ments in information technologies. 

C&RL News November 2006  624 

www.ala.org/ala