DATA AND EXTENDED FUNCTIONS OF A READING ROOM

Reading is the main way in which people acquire information; the function of a paper information reading room is to understand public habits, create an environment, and make a “readers’ space” to link users with information. In English, the word “information” is used to indicate the Chinese word “信息.” This word has several meanings in English: news, intelligence, knowledge, report, speech, lecture, notice, service platform, inform, tell, [computer] information. It is clear that “information” is a word with a wide range of connotations. According to Wang (1986), “information is a signal from the universe that is combined with a media substance. Information is from a substance, but it is not the substance where it is from. It is a new substance, a combination of medium and signal. Such change occurred in the twinkling of an eye” (Wang, 2005). In this paper, we discuss the meaning of information and present ideas about how paper-oriented reading rooms have become digital and how digital reading rooms can be extended to cybercafés, TV, radios, and telephones.

Reading rooms are classified according to natural sciences, social sciences, books, newspapers and periodicals, comprehensive, languages, self-study, etc.Except for self-study rooms, each paper reading room contains some books, magazines, and newspapers that are not shelved and are available for readers' immediate use.ordering.The selection of materials in reading rooms is limited to some extent, and when users inquire about information, they often have no success.There are also many tasks in reading rooms that must be completed by workers.For example, arranging bookshelves, being on duty, putting the printed materials in order, and cleaning rooms cannot be done by a computer.(Wang, 2005) In the Chinese media market, book publication is 33.6%, newspapers are 6.1%, and periodicals are 9.2%.We can see that paper media information is generally in a developing stage.A reading room is a place where information resources are concentrated, and books are the main information carriers.
must be renewed continuously.Reading rooms exhibiting information on bookshelves have special people to manage the material, serve the readers, and respect the reading habits of the public by taking great effort to make the library surroundings and buildings a "readers' space."They allow readers to sit calmly at the desks, swimming in the sea of books, and reflecting an ideal of public life.The librarian of a paper information reading room is looked upon as a storekeeper, worker, and manager.(Wang & Liu, 2005)

A DIGITAL-READING ROOM
The main characteristic of a digital-reading room is that information entering each reading room exceeds the scope of paper information.With effective technology support, digital-reading rooms can provide reading services all around the world.Today, spreading and using digital information has played an important role in people's productivity and lives.Non-paper information goes almost anywhere.The huge amount of digital information, as well as the combination of telecommunications, computer, networks, and human consciousness, spreads videos, text, and pictures very fast.Therefore, information carriers and methods of management in reading rooms have changed significantly (Wang, 2005).This change means that readers can enjoy service without coming to the library, so the distance between consumers and information is bridged.Since 1994, the American government has invested 22 million U.S. dollars to carry out "an innovation plan of a digital library" in Carnegie Mellon and five other universities.They have employed information technology to transform paper information into digital information and then delivered the digital information to the Internet (Wang, 2005).By 2005, there were many cities and universities that used the Internet and had built digital-reading rooms.Here is an overview of several digital-reading rooms in several main public libraries in China.

Digital-reading rooms in the National Library of China
The National Library of China, located in Beijing, has 46 reading rooms.Among these are 23 open-shelf reading rooms, providing 2.1 million copies of books for readers.It is open 365 days a year; 13.36 thousand people visit everyday with 70000 copies of documentation circulated each day.It contains eight digital-reading rooms, linking 37 Chinese databases and 77 foreign language databases via the Internet.Its retrieval system had an OPAC consolidated catalogue, including 16000 copies of electronic periodicals, doctoral treatises, conference proceedings, and enterprise name lists.On September 20, 2005, the National Library of China opened its digital resources with no copyright to all readers in the country free of charge with more than 70 million pages.The second-term project of the National Library of China, to be finished by 2007, will provide 10 million items (contents, booklists, catalogues) for readers, digital resources of the Internet and Intranet, and add 600 seats to the digital-reading rooms.According to its construction objective, the whole system will have the capability of: transforming 300 thousand copies of paper information into digital information each year; finishing 3 million sheets of microfilms; dealing with 90 thousand pieces of booklists, abstract lists, digital resources; marking and referring to 6000 hours of audio-visual resources; 60TB of on-line storage; 340TB of near-line storage; 340TB of off-line digital resources; 6000 information access spots in the library; Internet resource output beyond 1TB/day; 3000G/second access band width; 100 thousand retrieval requests/minute; 0.2 billion pieces of metadata retrieval; providing 0.1 billion pages of full text retrieval resources.

Digital-reading rooms in the Capital Library of China
The Capital Library of China is located in Beijing.It has 15 reading rooms with 2000 seats and two Data Science Journal, Volume 6, Supplement, 2 December 2007 S860 digital-reading rooms.The digital-reading rooms have 90 computers, providing services such as reading on-line, downloading, printing, scanning, recording, etc.The audio-visual reading room has 80 computers, providing services for broadcasting, CD-ROMs, DVDs, etc.

Digital-reading rooms in the Shanghai Library
The Shanghai Library has 25 reading rooms, 1651 seats, and 2 digital-reading rooms.There are 70 computers in the network learning reading rooms, providing on-line services, and 132 computers in the multi-media newspaper reading room, providing an index for national newspapers and periodicals as well as the Chinese news index service.
The digital-reading room is a cultural mechanism that relies on modern communication technology and digital processing technology to collect, arrange, display, and circulate information to serve people who study, play, and research in it.Today we have realized access to publications through codes such as ISBD, ISBN, ISSN, ISTP, and ISSHP with digital methods on a network.Digital-reading rooms also link networks and non-paper management, putting information on Intranet, and providing reading services in reading districts.A digital-reading room can be several hundred or just several square meters in area; reading, viewing, and listening can be in or outside, that is to say, in a room or an outdoor environment.The area needs only a reading desk or other flat space, a seat, and a computer linked to the Internet, providing service to any reader.An information spot is the extension of reading room that has only a port used for a wired or wireless linkage to the Internet.The objective of a digital-reading room is to provide complete, new, fast, and accurate service for readers all over the world (Wang, 2005).Librarians working in digital-reading rooms must master information technology and two subjects of knowledge; otherwise they do not meet the needs of the modern library.This requirement is remarkably different from that of librarians in the past.A qualified librarian now must know a foreign language well because 80% of the information from Internet is in English.If a librarian doesn't know English, he cannot fulfill his job (Wang, 2005).
It is clear that "information" is a word with a wide range of connotations.Therefore, there are many answers to the question "what is information?"According to the theory of electromagnetic fields (Wang, 1986), it may be expressed as "information is the combination of the signals from the universe and the communication media." Information is a substance, but it is not the substance from which it originates.It is a new substance that combines media with signals.Such a change occurs instantly (Wang, 2005).According to this definition, people use digital-reading rooms to do all kinds of viewing and listening activities and extend the use from audiovisual studio, video recording room, and research room, to the outside.The digital-reading room is part of Internet information communication media, and the Internet is in limitless space.Therefore it extends the reading space from a room to an outdoor area and then to limitless space, an inevitable development.The major reading service in a digital-reading room is on-line access, with an alternate usage of readable magnetic storage media.
The functions of digital-reading rooms are discussed below.

Table 1 .
Make up of 11 universities' reading rooms , newspapers, and periodicals to serve readers.Most information in reading rooms is in the form of printed-paper materials, and catalogue cards and retrieval periodicals are used to reflect information about the collection of books.Only by coming to reading rooms can readers obtain the needed information.Most processing work in reading rooms is done by hand.Librarians in reading rooms classify documents into classical, excellent, common, inferior, and waste material categories during the course of classifying, cataloguing, and ordering.Documents in a reading room are also classified into languages, subjects, age, and size.A reading room undertakes the duty to provide useful and effective information to readers.When processing materials, librarians order, check and accept, register, catalogue, loan, duplicate, collect, inquire, bind, etc.This process not only is complicated but also needs stable workers and facilities.On the one hand, there are a large number of books, newspapers, and periodicals in the market; on the other hand, a reading room has limited resources for