GUIYANG, the capital city of Southwest China’s Guizhou Province, witnessed the grand opening of the yearly gathering of librarians and information researchers in China in the morning of October 26th.

Co-organised by the Ministry of Culture and the Library Society of China, this year’s meeting convened for the first time under the name of “The Annual Convention of Libraries in China & the Library Society of China”.

Nearly 1500 delegates from around the country attended the convention, including the government officials, librarians, scholars and researchers, as well as people representing the library-related businesses such as the traditional and digital content publishers, the LIS developers, the IT and library equipment manufacturers and suppliers.

In concert with the theme of “Public welfare, Innovation and Development: the Chinese Librarianship of 2011~2015”, the annual convention set up altogether 17 concurrent sessions around the topics of library legislation, library evaluation, digital resources construction and sharing, free services, service innovation in the juvenile libraries, the digital library promotion project, etc. A total of 1,261 papers had been submitted to the review committee of the conference.

The convention concluded on October 27th. Next year it will move to the city of Dongguan of Guangdong Province. (2011-10-31)