With a staff of over 470 and a collection about 11.5 million items, the National Science Library serves more than 100 CAS Chinese Academy of Sciences] institutes in over 24 cities across China. The National Science Library is also leading national efforts to build a powerful National Scientific Information Infrastructure. As the key member of the National Science and Technology Library (NSTL), a consortium established in 2000 by the Chinese Ministry of Science and Technology, it initiates strategic planning and system development projects for NSTL, organises dissemination of its resources to the public, and collaborates with major domestic and foreign libraries for resource sharing and research collaboration.
It is this focus on expanding the sharing of scholarship in the networked digital environment, as well as the emergence of new scholarly communication norms, that led to its participation in the open access movement. In 2003, the Chinese Academy of Sciences was the first Chinese institution to sign the Berlin Declaration on Open Access to Knowledge in the Sciences and Humanities.
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The National Science Library (NSL) considered the development of a federated repository network, the CAS Institutional Repository Grid, to be an essential part of the strategy, based on the institutional repositories (IR) implemented in CAS institutes. The NSL-IR, designed as a best practice test-bed, became operational in February 2009. After eight months, over 2,100 items produced by NSL staff have been placed in the Knowledge Repository.
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A marketing strategy to promote the building of an IR in each CAS institute has encouraged over 40 institutes to develop an IR. A Chinese Open Access Portal has been established to build capacity and to advocate for open access.
According to Prof. Xiaolin Zhang, subject librarians play a key role. `’On the one hand, they have trained the institute librarians in how to build and administer an IR. On the other hand, they have trained students and faculty staff in how to use an IR. At the same time, they have been instrumental in convincing the leaders of the institutes to provide policy and financial support for the IRs.” After a few short years, open access is firmly established in China.
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