Research on the Development of University Library Regional Alliances in China

With the development of China’s social economy, higher education and the Internet, China has established a number of regional alliances (RA) of university libraries (UL). The university library regional alliances (ULRAS) are an important part of university library alliances (ULAS). The development of ULRAS in China plays an important role in promoting the construction of ULAS and improving the whole network system of Chinese university library alliances (CULAS). This paper mainly adopts the method of case analysis to study the development of ULRAS in China from the perspectives of development status, characteristics and trend. The purpose is to study the general model of the development of ULAS in China and provide reference for the construction of RA in other regions of China and other countries in the world.


Introduction
With the vigorous development of China's social and economic, higher education and the Internet, the "co-construction and sharing" (CCS) has become the strong voice of China's UL cooperation. In the past 20 years, the construction of university library alliances (ULAS) in China has made great progress, and large-scale regional alliances (RA) have been established in various provinces.
The development of regional library alliances (RLAS) in China has made great contributions to the improvement of the system construction and the promotion of the development of ULAS in China. This paper mainly adopts the method of case analysis to study the RA of UL in China from the status, models and trend, L. Yi DOI: 10.4236/vp.2020.63014 123 Voice of the Publisher so as to provide reference for the construction of regional alliances of UL in other regions of China and other countries in the world.

Provincial Regional Alliances
In the past 20 years, so many ULAS have been established in China, as shown in Table 1 (Yi, 2020). It is not difficult to find that there are three factors that play a key role in the development of regional university library alliances (RULAS) in each province. First of all, the construction and development of RULAS cannot do without the strong support of local governments (Yi, 2014). In the process of the development of the provincial RULAS, the provincial education departments are often the main body of investment and management. For example, the Hunan Provincial Department of Education (PDE) included the construction of the Hunan Academic Digital Library (HADL) as a key project in its 2004 work deployment. In April 2004, the project passed the official bidding, and Hunan Normal University was finally determined to be the contractor for the construction of the project (Tan & Huang, 2019). Without the strong support of the HPDE, HADL would be impossible to be built. Another example is the Hubei University Digital Library (HUDL), which is invested and constructed under the leadership of the Hubei PDE to build a shared service system (SS) for the literature resources (LR) of universities across the province (Cheng & Pei, 2008). Its purpose is to rely on modern network technology (including big data, artificial intelligence, Internet of things, blockchain, cloud computing, etc.) to use the LR of all UL in the province as a foundation, to establish a document resource (DR) system and an online public SS that combines paper collections and electronic documents to serve teachers and students in colleges and universities across the province.  (Hou et al., 2017).
Thirdly, there is a subjective desire among UL to share resources through alliances construction (AC), which is also an important factor in promoting AC. University signed the admission ceremony. As the first university alliance officially launched in Yunnan Province, the establishment of the YNULA is conducive to the joint procurement of information resources (IR) and the establishment of regional libraries, and promotes the construction of characteristic data resource libraries among member libraries in the alliance, and realizes information the expansion of shared space and the CCS of resources (Li & Duan, 2015).
In October 2017, the "Sichuan Province Double First-Class UL Construction Alliance" was announced in the Sichuan UL, whose members include the top 8 universities in Sichuan Province.

Municipal Regional Alliances
From the perspective of the development of RA of Chinese academic libraries, not only large provincial-level alliances have been established, but academic libraries in a city are also very keen to establish alliances， as shown in Table 2. For example, Guangzhou UL Alliance currently has 12 member libraries, and has built digital resource systems such as regional resource platform, joint catalog of foreign periodicals, Free Electronic Full-text Database, innovative reference digest library, journal evaluation and contribution system, online information University. The alliance hopes to vigorously promote the development of the joint construction and sharing of regional university LR and the innovation of information services (IS) models through the in-depth exchanges and cooperation of the libraries of the fraternal colleges and universities, so as to better provide resource guarantee and knowledge for the city's higher education and economic and social development service.

Inter-Provincial Regional Alliances
In April 2011, the Shanghai Municipal Education Commission, the Jiangsu PDE, and the Zhejiang PDE jointly signed the "Framework Agreement for UL Alliance in the Yangtze River Delta", marking the establishment of the "Yangtze River Delta University Library Alliance (YRDULA)". The purpose of the YRDULA is to jointly build a service sharing platform for academic libraries in the Yangtze River Delta region, including print resources, with digital resources as the main body, so as to realize the co-construction, mutual knowledge and sharing of academic literature and IR in the Yangtze River Delta (Zhuang, 2012 in the three places, promote the joint construction and sharing of resources, and achieve the goal of mutual benefit and win-win results.

Phased Construction
In 1997, Jiangsu Academic Library Information System (JALIS) was officially launched. Therefore, Jiangsu Provincial Education Department set up a leading team of JALIS, which is specifically responsible for the organization and implementation of the construction scheme, management coordination, supervision and inspection. JALIS phase I has established a complete SS (regional circulation management system). The "regional circulation management system (MS)" independently developed by JALIS phase II has covered more than 120 universities and scientific research institutes in the province, the 80% of the universities in the province have joined the JALIS joint catalog system. The total number of books and documents in the collection can exceed 50 million, which has been opened to universities and society in the whole province. It has been implemented in six regional teaching consortia including Nanjing, Changzhou, Huaian, Yancheng, Xuzhou and Nantong At present, it has provided services such as joint catalog query, interlibrary loan and reference consultation, and has carried out DD cooperation with world-famous libraries such as University of Pittsburgh East Asia Library, Australian National Library, Taiwan UL and so on, so as to continuously improve the international level. The third phase of JALIS has carried out the construction of high-quality teaching resources database which is closely related to the reality of Jiangsu higher education, including brand characteristic specialty, excellent course, multimedia teaching courseware, practical teaching, teaching reference resource database, and other database construction closely related to teaching and scientific research (Wu & Zhou, 2006). technology as the means, and relying on the stable Internet, the AADL will gradually take shape. It has become a digital information resource guarantee platform and SS with domestic advanced level, unified planning, resource service sharing, multi-level, complete functions, rich resources, high integration, stable mechanism and efficient operation. Through the construction of Anhui Province Network Course Learning Center, Anhui Province regional higher education open education resources alliance will be established to realize the CCS of high-quality education resources, build personalized personal online learning center, and create a new online education mode to promote the continuous improvement of higher education teaching quality in Anhui Province.

Project Operation
Zhejiang Academic Digital Library (ZADL) adopts a project MS, and the management center of ZADL determines the subprojects to be constructed according

Development Trend
The fourth phase of JALIS mainly relies on university informatization (UI) and big data centers to provide resources and services for the readers, in order to adapt to the development of UI and big data technology, a unified, integrated, distributed, open, multi-level and personalized, "Jiangsu University Digital Library Cloud Service Platform" will be built. HADL has played an innovating and advancing role in the digitization of university LR, and promoted the formation of various types of UL alliance cooperative organizations, which is not only a working entity, but also an academic research institution and business training institution. In addition to studying the operating mechanism and development of digital libraries, they should also engage in the research of IS and digital library environments. HADL is not only an information or knowledge warehouse, but also an information and knowledge discovery and learning system. The service of "Fujian University Digital Library" (FULink) has been transformed from L. Yi DOI: 10.4236/vp.2020.63014 129 Voice of the Publisher the original four major contents of "Document Provision", "Joint borrowing", "Mobile FULink", and "CD with Books" to the vast number of teachers and students throughout the province "Knowledge Center", "Learning Center" and "Communication Center". AADL will eventually be built into an information consulting center, a knowledge innovation and dissemination center, an online course teaching center, and a social service center that provide IS for all industries, becoming an important component of the innovative information infrastructure in Anhui Province.

Conclusion
From the perspective of the current situation and development trend, the con- and "Cloud Service Center" will be the important direction of the CULRAS development.

Conflicts of Interest
The author declares no conflicts of interest regarding the publication of this paper.