按：2011年11月17日，应威斯康星大学麦迪逊分校 School of Library and Information Studies的邀请，笔者为该院师生作了题为《中国古代图书馆学的学术传统》的主旨报告。以下文字内容根据会场PPT整理而成，欢迎大家指正。

Good afteroon everyone, thank you for your attending this discussion!

First of all, let me introduce our school to you. In fact, the School of Information Management of Wuhan University has deep historical roots in United States Libraries. In 1920, its predecessor, Boone Library School, was founded by Mary Elizabeth Wood (1861-1931), a librarian and missionary from Richmond Memorial Library, Batavia, New York. It became the origin of modern library science education in China. Nowadays, the school has developed into the largest and a comprehensive education and research institute of Library and Information Science in China, with more than 100 faculty and staff members, involving library science, information science, archival science, publishing science, information management and information system, E-commerce, information resources management, management science and engineering programs. It has established an education system with bachelor’s, master’s, doctoral, and post-doctor’s programs as well as coordinately-developed systems of continuing education, high-level training,and professional degree education of various modes.

In China, there is no doubt that the establishment and development of modern libraries and Library Science was the result of the eastward spread of western library-science theories. In 1902, Gu-yue Library, the first public library of China was founded by Xu Shulan, an enlightened gentry from Shaoxing of Zhejiang province. Referring to western libraries, Gu-yue library was open to the public and a new book classification and management system were implemented. In the field of library science education, Ms. Elizabeth Wood founded Boone Library School, in which the curriculums and textbooks were basically modeled on that of New York State Library School. It marked the creation of the modern Library Science Education in China. Through these two landmark events, we can believe that western library science theory has played a very important role in transforming traditional book-collecting buildings to public libraries, creating and promoting the development of modern library science in China.

However, some people maybe have questions. As we know, China is an ancient country with more than 5,000 years of history and there were countless book-collecting buildings and ancient books in its history. According to incomplete statistics, nowadays there are existing more than 30 million volumes of ancient books in about 100,000 titles in China. Before western library science spread into China, how were these book-collecting buildings managed and how were so many books collated and utilized? If there was library science in ancient China, what is the difference and connection between the library science in ancient China and modern library science in western countries? That is my topic today.

In my opinion, there were two completely different development paths for library science in ancient China and modern library science in western countries. The development path for western library science is from institution construction and management to service and technology. In western countries, as we know, libraries were established on the basis of the democratic system and were open to the public. In other words, library was looked as a kind of social institution designed to protect those rights of the public from the perspective of some library scientists at that time. So in the initial stage, it had two distinct features: institution and management. Martin W. Schrettinger, a library scientist from Germany and Edward Edwards, a library scientist form England were representative figures.

Differently from western library science, ancient China library science was started from studying literatures and documents to knowledge organization and management. As you know, ancient China has a long history of feudal autocracy for nearly 2,000 years. It was impossible to establish public libraries opened to the whole society. At that time, all kinds of royal and private book-collecting buildings were not open to the public and book lending service was for only few people, such as government officials, elite intellectuals, and family members. Under this circumstance, ancient China library science concentrated on the text content study of books. (The representatives were Liu Xiang of Han dynasty, Zheng Qiao of Song dynasty, Ma Duanlin of Yuan dynasty and Zhang Xuecheng of Qing dynasty.

In ancient China, main six aspects of studies were included in “library science”, such as history of books and print culture, book collection and management, empirical studies on ancient books, cataloging and indexing, content interpretation, content reorganization. Because there were not public libraries open to most of people, “library science” in ancient China had another name: Chinese classical philology.

Studies on the history of books and print culture are very comprehensive, including studying on the carrier material of ancient books (such as bones or tortoise shells, bamboo slips, silk manuscripts, paper transcripts and rubbings, woodblock print books, movable wooden-type books, stone lithograph books), the binding and layout of ancient books (the following pictures reveal the development of binding and layout of Chinese ancient books), the genre and style of ancient books, the increasing number and types of ancient books in different historical stages, modes of bookmaking and communication, relationship between book publishing and social development, and so on.

Book collection and management included book acquisition and collection, book preservation and restoration, and book circulation and management. By the way, although book-collecting buildings were not open to the public, the book circulation existed in small intellectual elite. These two pictures describe the scene of ancient book restoration.

Empirical studies on ancient books mainly include four parts. First, edition study is to distinguish different editions of the same book, reveal the origin and development of the book and choose the best edition for readers. Second, collation study is to compare similarities and differences among several different editions of the same book, seek common ground while reserving differences, discard the dross and select the essential, and correct mistakes for remaking the best edition for readers. Thirdly, identification study is to identify fake books and provide the real one for readers. Finally, Study of compiling scattered ancient writings, is to collect all the scattered ancient writings and compile them into an intact book for readers.

In ancient China, there were two main book classification systems. One is book six-classification system and another one is book four-classification system. Book six-classification was created by Liu Xiang in 26 B.C. From that time to 656 A.D., it was the mainstream book classification. Book four-classification system was created in 254 A.D. However, it had become the mainstream of book classification system until early Tang dynasty, about 656 A.D. Take Siku Quanshu Zongmu Tiyao as an example, it includes four elementary classification, Confucian classics, history, philosophy and literature, and 44 small categories. Additionally, there was some important private book classification system, such as Zheng Qiao’s Book twelve-classification system. It had an encyclopedic style. The first Index Hongwu zhengyun yujian appeared in 1575.

Content interpretation includes punctuation and annotation. As you know, there was no punctuation in Chinese ancient books and classical Chinese was very difficult to understand. So the philologist should insert punctuation in the text and write annotation. In this picture, the red point and circle are some pause points. The double-line print is annotation and the single-line print is original text of the book. In ancient China, writing annotation was a very important way of book-remaking.

Content reorganization mainly embodies the compilation of ancient Chinese encyclopedia-style books. According to the knowledge system designed in advance, the editor compile the Chinese encyclopedia-style books by quoting original sentences, paragraphs, and even the whole text of a presentation from many ancient books. The first Chinese encyclopedia-style book is Huang-lan, compiled in 222 A.D. There were several hundred Chinese encyclopedia-style books in ancient China. Actually, it was an ancient method of knowledge organization.

In ancient China, there were main four academic traditions in Library Science.

Firstly, there was a common study procedure for collating books in ancient China. The chart reveals the five steps of the procedure: edition collecting, title determining, text proofreading, book classifying and book describing. This study procedure of collating books was created by Liu Xiang in 26 B.C., and since then, it has become a tradition inherited by later scholars. Both in official and private collection, this study procedure were very popular.

Secondly, there was a tradition of revealing the development of academic history. It was called “辨章学术，考镜源流” in Chinese. It was a very famous tradition in Chinese classical Bibliography and its basic idea is that Bibliography should aim to reveal the academic headstream. But how to do that? There were main three ways: write an abstract for one book, make an introduction to a small category and a description for a big classification. Usually, the content of them included the book’s content and structure, the author’s biography, the whole course of book writing and collating, the inheritance of academic thoughts. If we collect all the introduction and description together, that is the academic history of ancient China.

Thirdly, there was a tendency of knowledge theory. In ancient China, the definition of documentation is “文献”. It consist two words and was created by Confucius more than 2,500 years ago. The meaning of “文献”has roughly gone two stages. The first stage, according to Zheng Xuan, a philologist more than 1,800 years ago, “文”meant ancient books, “献”meant the people with high morality and talent. The second stage, according to Ma Duanlin, a philologist nearly 700 years ago, “文” meant formal written materials and “献”meant informal oral records. Actually, the definition of “文献”included the meaning of objective and subjective knowledge in ancient China. Zhengqiao’s Book twelve-classification system embodied the thoughts of knowledge management.

Finally, There was a general and broadened vision on ancient books (会通观). It was a kind of ideal thought that books all over the history in China should be regard as a whole one book and we should try our best to compile them into a whole one book. This thought originated from Sima Qian，a very famous historian 2,100 years ago. He said in his historical book Shiji, “exploring the universe and human as much as possible and learning about the past and the present as much as one can.”(究天人之际，通古今之变). There are three books like this, Duyou’s Tongdian，published in 801 A.D., Zheng Qiao’s Tongzhi，published in 1161 A.D., and Ma Duanlin’s Wenxian tongkao, published in1307 A.D. In fact, these books all embodied the thought of knowledge management.

In a word, the connection between Library Science of ancient China and modern western Library Science is knowledge organization and management.

原文连接：http://blog.sina.com.cn/s/blog_4dc014a00100wb6z.html