Dongguan library

Brief Introduction

Dongguan Library is a modern central city library which conveys the concept of knowledge and the function of traditional libraries on the basis of the digital technology. Dongguan Library was officially open on September 28, 2005. It adopts the new service model by collecting, borrowing, reading, searching, exhibiting and selling books. Dongguan Library has an area of 44,654 square meters and ranks first in prefecture-level cities. There are 10 characteristic libraries and over 20 service points in Dongguan Library, such as the first Comic Library on Mainland China, the first domestic Self-Service Library, the Library of Daily Life, Dongguan Local Collections, Taiwan Local Collections and so on. Under the guideline of developing together with regional libraries, Dongguan has implemented the center-branch library system. By June 2010, Dongguan has established one Central Library, 47 branches and 102 service stations and achieved the goal of 24/7 services which covers 32 towns in the city.

IT Library

Located inside the Electronic Service Zone on the second floor of Dongguan Library, the IT Library provides services of book reading and information searching, learning and experience sharing on IT for readers, a platform of communication and product promotion for manufacturers and businessmen, and successful cases and relevant materials for IT users.

Library of Daily Life (food, clothing, housing & travel)
Located on the fourth floor of Dongguan Library, the Library of Daily Life has a collection of specialized books, newspapers, periodicals and electronic publications on daily life and offers services of book reading, information searching, special topic consultant, communicating and member activities.

Taiwan Book Room

Located on the fourth floor of Dongguan Library, Taiwan Book Room has collected books and newspapers published in Taiwan, which focuses on philosophy, economy, history, geography, literature and popular books. It is striving to provide Taiwan compatriots with warm, natural and cordial environment that makes them feel like being home. Moreover, it’s used to hold some activities and reflects the friendly relationship between Mainland China and Taiwan.

Dongguan Book Room

Dongguan Book Room is located on the fourth floor of Dongguan library. It stores up newspapers and periodicals from Dongguan local publishers, books written by Donguanese and all kinds of business information and urbanization data about Dongguan. Books which were donated by Dongguan celebrities are kept here in the complimentary book zone. Readers can not only find books and read here, but also find help of project study and reference for strategic decision.

Children’s Zone

Located on the first floor of Dongguan Library, Children’s Zone is divided into four areas, including Material Circulation Room, Electronic Resource Room, Toy Library and Etiquette Education Room. Children’s Zone provides reading, media learning, toys and etiquette education for children under age of 14 as well as their parents and teachers. This Zone creates a warm and happy study atmosphere for children.

Cantonese Opera Collection

Located in Children's Library on Xinfen Road, the Cantonese Opera Library has a collection of numerous Cantonese Operas tunes and references, including books, magazines, newspapers, leaflets, MuYu books, operas, posters, scripts, audio-visual materials, manuscripts, clippings, tickets. This library widely calls for and accepts donations to support research and information preservation.

Comic Library

As the first comic library in domestic public libraries, the Comic Library of Dongguan Library has a collection of comic books, magazines, periodicals and audio-visual materials from Mainland China, Hong Kong and Taiwan. Besides, the Library set up a specialized website to provide kinds of services, such as online reading and drawing, comic appreciation and cosplay and so on. The Comic Show Room is a platform on the basis of the Comic Library to show professional materials, aiming at serving comic industries and professionals by exhibitions, products, equipment and sketches, etc.

Toy Library

The Toy Library, on the first floor of the Children’s Zone in Dongguan Library, provides enlightening and educational toys for children age 2 to 8. There are more than 700 toys which are divided into ten types, such as about architecture, innovation, music, physics, role play, chess and puzzle and so on. These toys meet the nation safety standards and promote the development of children’s organs, languages, concepts and social ability, and so on.

Dongguan Comic Festival

Taking advantage of abundant information resources and local comic resources, Dongguan Comic Festival is a professional public activity of Dongguan Reading Festival. The main feature of Comic Festival is interacting with comic fans, local comic societies, comic writers, cos players and comic businessmen. Depending on the continual innovation, Dongguan Comic Festival has attracted comic fans of bulk adolescent for its unique charm. It plays a very important role in the formation and development of Dongguan local comic culture in every Dongguan Comic Festival.

Lectures Series for Citizen

Lectures Series for Citizen is a brand activity of Dongguan Library, which is a series of nonprofit, long-term and regular lectures for Dongguan citizens. Since 2005, the lecture has been held once or twice a week, including several series. The lecturers are famous experts, scholars, celebrities in various fields. In addition, we have edited and published the books named Citizen Lecture, adopting recordings of some excellent lectures. It has been continuously published four series.

Lecture Series——Citizen Space

Lecture series——Citizen Space is a series of long-term non-profit lectures for the public，which is about some practical knowledge of daily life .It is held in the south of the fourth floor of Dongguan library. Since May 2007, the Citizen Space has recruited more than 30 volunteers in the community and established several themes relevant to daily life, such as health care, law, car, decoration salon, mental health, financial, and travel. They were all well received by the public.

Etiquette Home

Etiquette Home is a free training course， which was specifically established for children ages from 6 to 12 years in July 2005. By creating a reality of life scenes the course combines etiquette knowledge with practice for children to learn etiquette in a relaxing setting, so that it can help children form good habits from early age. A book Children's Etiquette has been edited based on the training practice.

Children’s Storytelling Contest

The children’s storytelling contest I Retell a Story in a Book was a main activity of Dongguan Reading Festival, which was jointly organized by Dongguan Library, its branches and Songshan Lake Library. In 2009, 6000 children players from 32 town-level branches competed out the best story teller after 34 matches. It provided a challenging stage for those children who loved telling stories and developed their language skills as well as reading interests by retelling classic stories.

4.23 World Book and Copyright Day Activities

Since 2006, the 4.23 World Book and Copyright Day Activities have been continuously held by Dongguan Library. More and more citizens are attracted to read books. Every year, the reading activities stick to the theme of “reading” with the form of classic poetry recitations, which varied as “Rhythm of Poetry”(2006), “English Essay”(2007), “Flying Dreams”(2008), “Blessing Our Motherland”(2009) and ”Book Fragrance in Dongguan”(2010).

Dongguan Reading Festival

Dongguan Reading Festival is the first large comprehensive cultural activity for the public and it is also an important brand activity organized by Dongguan Municipal Government for disseminating knowledge. Once a year since 2005, there have been over 2,000 activities held with more than 1,500,000 people to come. As a result, the passion for reading has been inspired and spread to all around the city. Furthermore, a lot of special reading activities have been held in the towns besides the main activities in the city, which have made Dongguan Reading Festival more popular.

Dongguan Citizens' Learning Website

It’s a non-profit multimedia platform that offers remote education service to all citizens. So far, there have been more than 1,900 curriculums, covering various fields of social life, including science, culture, history, art and other basic necessities of life. Once registered, every member will be able to get access to a personal curriculum management center, take the online courses and manage personal learning information positively.

Dongguan Family Collection Website

The personalized bookmark website is open to the public and integrates functions of book collecting and social networking. Users can create a personalized virtual library of their own, add favorite or wanted book items to the library through the website search engine and even categorize, prioritize or comment the added books. With the functions of “my book shelf”, “my space”, “book index”, etc., users are able to share book resources, communicate reading information, exchange learning experience and share the joy of reading with other book lovers on a specific network platform.

Library Services to Household

Uniting branches of all towns and villages, Dongguan Library sends library services to all households to create household reading atmosphere by taking various means for public convenience, including book express, book recommendation, serial books lending, upcoming activity, reading club, reading with rewards, special activities on holiday, book review online, family digital library and so on.

Mobile Library

The Mobile library introduced by Dongguan Library includes WAP and SMS services. Through mobile WAP sites, readers are provided free of charge with services such as books renewal, books query, books reading, exhibitions information, service guide. Readers can also get information of activities, lectures, recommendation of books and proverbs for free.

Information Service for Two Conferences

Service for Two Conferences is a new service projects offered by Dongguan library annually during NPC and CPPCC in Dongguan. Annually since 2004, Dongguan library sends professional persons on the spot, providing different services such as topical documents, research services, certificates registration, book lending for the NPC deputies and CPPCC committee members, which gain lots of praise and recognition.

Self-Service Library

In September 2005, Dongguan launched the first Self-service Library in China. It houses a Self Checkout and a collection of more than 10,000 volumes of books. The Self-Service Library which provides 24-hour services every day all the year around enables people to borrow, return and read books even when the main hall is closed.

In December 2007, the first library ATM (self-service book station) of China was set up in Dongguan. Each library ATM device stores 500-1000 books, with which readers can borrow and return books automatically. By the end of 2009, there had been 7 library ATMs placed in residential areas, hospitals, square, branch libraries to serve people.