From August 16 to 27, the Shanghai Library East Building will launch a public test run, offering readers the greatest degree of open space, exclusively customized “punch-your-card” orientation, and all-inclusive theme activities. Through online reservations and onsite participation, readers will take the opportunity of this activity to build their dream image of the Shanghai Library East Building, and help to demonstrate the idea of people’s city with "people's library built by the people and people's library for the people".
The Shanghai Library East Building covers an area of 115,000 m2, and is currently the largest single library building in China. The East Building will provide nearly 6,000 seats for readers, meet the needs for more than 200 lectures and thousands of special activities every year, and the annual number of visits is expected to reach 4 million.
During the test period, readers can make reservations for library visits, book loan, seating, special activities, exhibitions, audio-visual experiences, etc. through the new reservation system. This brand new library service reservation system is the first of its kind in the country’s library. It not only guarantees convenience and fairness, but also helps to promote personalized services.
The children's area of the East Building has created a theme exploratory reading environment with the characteristics of popular science innovation, with "Alice in Wonderland: Down the Rabbit Hole”, a retrospective exhibition of Alice's 100 years in China, and "Chinese Dream in Picture Books" as the library’s opening theme exhibitions. It holds more than 160,000 children's books in Chinese and foreign languages, and provides a full range of reading services and reading guidance for children and adolescents under the age of 14.
The Reading Plaza provides integrated book loan services for about 400,000 books and more than 600 titles of periodicals in Chinese and foreign languages. It integrates functions such as mobile phone book loan, mobile phone book recommendation, and print-electronic books integration. It is equipped with virtual robot assistants to provide readers with book search and reference services, seat reservation and information interaction, and realizes the precise service of "finding readers for books and finding books for readers" through indoor positioning and big data analysis. The special "librarian" service robot provides readers with book loan, search, explanation and recommendation, indoor orientation, intelligent dialogue, patrol broadcast and other services. The new generation intelligent logistics sorting system provides self-service book return and automatic sorting services for the circulation of single or multiple books, which can achieve rapid book return to shelves and support 24-hour all-weather circulation services.