Source: Sun Yat-sen University Libraries

Written by: Luo Hedie

Translated by: Lin Wenmin

Edited by: Wang Dongmei

In order to promote library culture and encourage students to treat books with respect and use libraries in a civilized manner, an interesting library culture promotion exhibition has been held in the Library on East Campus since March, with the theme of “Di Renjie’s Visit to SYSU Library”.

The exhibition displays such potential inappropriate behaviors as over-due borrowing and inappropriate self-helping that might occur among students in their daily contact with the library. Consequences brought by these behaviors are made into interesting comic strips where Di Renjie and Yuan Fang, the two internet celebrities present the proper ways of borrowing and self-helping through their witty dialogues. It is aimed at providing reader education and promoting library culture in a light and funny way.

The exhibition is carried out through real display and microblogs. The real display in which posters and stained books are on show is held in the atrium on the third floor of the Library on East Campus. Numerous students stop to browse and leave hundreds of messages on the message board. On March 26th, hundreds of curators and librarians from across the country came to the Library for exchange and also visited the exhibition. They gave unanimous praise, took many pictures and said that they would bring the good experience back to their own libraries.

The microblog exhibition turns the comics into electronic versions which can easily spread through microblogs to attract more students and professionals to participate in it. The exhibition, with its high quality production and its comprehensive and informative contents in the form of vivid and interesting cartoons, yields unanimous praise from both students and professionals. “Zhubozhaizhu”, whose blogger is the Director of Sun Yat-sen University Libraries, comments: “Excellent picture posters of the library! Saved and retweeted!” Nglib says: “Too complete library promotion cartoons! It should be used as material for the freshman seminar.” A student says: “It is so cute. We all love the library!” The microblog was launched in mid March and by the end of April, it has been forwarded 461 times with 224,000 visits (statistics from Sina microblog system). More than 30 universities from 24 provinces and municipalities including Wuhan University Library and Beijing Normal University Library have forwarded the blogs.

Through the two forms of exhibition, the event has spread its publicity effect from the campus to the country. It promotes library culture and increases the influence of Sun Yat-sen University Libraries in the library circle.