About Library and Information Service

Library and Information Service

Library and Information Service is a Chinese-language journal of library and information science established in 1956, supervised by the Chinese Academy of Sciences and sponsored by the National Science Library, Chinese Academy of Sciences, in Beijing. It carries ISSN 0252-3116 and the Chinese publication number CN 11-1541/G2, and its Chinese title is Tushu Qingbao Gongzuo. First issued as the Newsletter of the Chinese Academy of Sciences Library, it took its present title in 1980, became a semimonthly publication, and is described by its sponsor as a national-level academic journal focused on information resource management. It was indexed by Scopus in July 2025, and its current editor-in-chief is Professor Chu Jingli.

A History in Five Names and Seven Decades

The journal's own introduction gives its history in unusual detail. Established in 1956, it was initially named the Newsletter of the Chinese Academy of Sciences Library. It was renamed Reference Materials for Library Work in 1961, suspended during the Cultural Revolution from 1967 to 1974, renamed again to Library Work in 1975, and in 1980 adopted its current title, Library and Information Service. Another account from the National Science Library describes the journal as semimonthly, reflecting the high frequency it later reached; its English journal-introduction page describes it as having become a bimonthly publication from 2009 in the English rendering of its publishing pattern, and researchers should rely on the journal's current site for its present frequency.

That sequence of names is a compressed history of Chinese librarianship itself: a library newsletter of the 1950s, a professional work journal of the 1960s and 1970s, suspension in the Cultural Revolution, revival, and from 1980 a title that joins library work to information service — the pairing that defined the modern Chinese discipline of library and information science.

Sponsor: The National Science Library

The journal is supervised by the Chinese Academy of Sciences and sponsored by the National Science Library, Chinese Academy of Sciences, in Beijing. The National Science Library is the Academy's central library and information institution — the library system serving China's national academy of sciences — and it publishes a family of journals from its Beijing centre, of which Library and Information Service is the senior title, alongside journals on new technology of library and information service, scientific and technical periodicals, and data and information science.

Publication by the national science library gives the journal its standing. Its advertising and introduction pages describe a national-level, large-scale academic journal in the field of information resource management, highly reputed for academic rigour, cutting-edge focus, authority, innovation and practicality, ranked among the top three in its discipline in influence, recipient of awards from national authorities, the Academy and the Library Society of China, with a print distribution exceeding thirty thousand copies a year in the period described.

Scope: Information Resource Management

The journal's stated focus is information resource management and related areas, reporting the latest research and practical advancements in that field, under a mission stated as combining theory with practice, promoting the academic spirit and driving the development of the field. Information resource management — how information is collected, organised, preserved, retrieved and delivered — is the modern framing of the discipline that grew out of librarianship and documentation, and the journal's title change in 1980 anticipated exactly that framing.

In practice its contents span the working territory of Chinese library and information science: library services and their transformation, information retrieval and organisation, digital libraries and repositories, bibliometrics and information analysis, information policy and the management of the institutions — libraries, archives and information centres — through which scientific and public information reaches its users.

Editor-in-Chief and Editorial Standing

The journal's current editor-in-chief, recorded on its introduction page, is Professor Chu Jingli, a leading figure in Chinese library and information science associated with the National Science Library. Editorial leadership drawn from the sponsoring institution's senior scholarship is characteristic of China's academy journals and ties the journal's direction to the institution that also operates the country's science-library infrastructure.

The journal states that it is fully included in the China National Knowledge Infrastructure (CNKI) full-text database, and its introduction page records a further milestone: indexing by Scopus in July 2025. Scopus indexing at that date is a significant recent development for a Chinese-language journal founded in 1956, placing its recent contents within the international citation system for the first time in its long history as recorded by its own site.

Place in Chinese Library and Information Science

Chinese library and information science has two senior national journals at its head, and this is one of them. Together with the Journal of Library Science in China — the Library Society of China's flagship — Library and Information Service is named in scholarly surveys of the field as one of the journals that gained recognition for quality and academic standing in Chinese library and information work. The two journals divide the field's leadership between the academy's information institution and the profession's society-and-national-library axis.

Where the society journal leans to library theory, this journal's declared centre is information resource management and the research-and-practice of information services — the documentation and information side of the discipline that its 1980 title announced.

Readership and Distribution

The journal's distribution, as its own pages describe, targets research-oriented library and information institutions at all levels, with a broad readership among the staff and researchers of China's libraries, information centres and library schools. An annual print subscription volume above thirty thousand copies, as recorded in its advertising description, is a large circulation for an academic journal and reflects the size of China's library system, in which every major research institution maintains a professional library staff.

To that domestic base, CNKI full-text inclusion adds the entire Chinese academic readership online, and Scopus indexing from 2025 adds international discoverability for its recent articles.

Identification

The journal is identified by its English title Library and Information Service, its Chinese title Tushu Qingbao Gongzuo, ISSN 0252-3116, CN 11-1541/G2, its Beijing base, and its supervision by the Chinese Academy of Sciences with sponsorship by the National Science Library. Those markers separate it cleanly from its sister National Science Library titles and from the Journal of Library Science in China, with which it is most likely to be confused by title alone.

Its recorded website for this profile is the journal's English introduction and columns site at its sponsor's domain, where the history, identifiers and editorial information used in this profile are published.

The Journal as Historical Source

Because it began in 1956 as the Chinese Academy of Sciences Library's own newsletter, the journal's back run is also a primary source for the history of Chinese scientific information: its pages across seven decades document how China's libraries organised scientific literature, built union catalogues and retrieval systems, adopted computing, and became digital information services. Histories of Chinese library and information development published in the journal itself draw on that record.

Few professional journals anywhere can show a run from the card-catalogue era to Scopus indexing within one continuous, if renamed and once-suspended, publication. That continuity is a large part of the journal's distinction.

Why the Journal Matters

Library and Information Service is one of the founding journals of a discipline in China: founded in 1956, renamed into modernity in 1980, published by the national science library, read across the country's research-library system, and newly visible internationally through Scopus. It is included in this directory as a senior Chinese magazine and academic journal of library and information science, with its full title history preserved so that its earlier incarnations are understood as the same journal.