FOLIO and Smart Libraries: Meeting the Future Needs of Chinese Libraries

Abstract

The vision and concept of FOLIO have gained the attention and expectation from libraries. Its open and flexible service platform provides an approach to the realization of the Smart Libraries in the future. On the basis of summarising the needs of Smart Libraries in China, the paper expounds the architecture and ideas of providing smart services based on FOLIO. By analyzing the problems and challenges in the implementation and localization of FOLIO in China, the author points out that the“Chinese Alliance for Library Service Platform”(also called YunHan Alliance) should play a very important role in running the Chinese FOLIO community. It should steward the direction of the community, carry out the minimum open source software application suite, cultivate an open platform ecology, so as to support the new business models for the prosperity of Chinese libraries in the future.