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This study aims to discuss the creation and development of China’s National Science and Technology Library (NSTL), provide an overview of the information services it provides for sci-tech researchers throughout the People’s Republic of China, and highlight the leading role it plays in fostering scientific innovation in China.

The author uses a case study approach based on his own professional experience at the NSTL.

The NSTL offers a wide variety of information, reference and document delivery services for sci-tech researchers in China.

The NSTL plays a leading role in the provision and innovation of such services, and as such has a direct and positive impact on the quality of scientific research and innovation in China.

The purpose of this case study is to explore the construction pattern and issues involved with the development of the National Science and Technology Library (NSTL) in China.

This study was conducted through an analytical evaluation of the historical development of scientific and technological information sharing among libraries and information centers and issues around construction of the NSTL.

Since the establishment of its network service system at the end of 2000, the NSTL has made rapid progress in constructing a sci‐tech information resource sharing system and offering web‐based information services to the patrons of scientific and technical communities all over China.

This paper is the first exploration that brings to the forefront the foundational background of the NSTL, the characteristics of its organizational structure, the functions of its service, and the tentative plan to increase its accessibility and usability. Symptomatic of the function of the NSTL constructing pattern will hopefully shed light not only to the reformation of the Chinese sci‐tech information management system, but also to the development of scientific digital libraries in the world.

The information behavior of National Science and Technology Library (NSTL) electronic resources users in China has not been researched extensively. This paper aims to help producers and providers collect information on user behavior and develop more electronic resources.

The study investigates NSTL users' behavior from seven “211 projects” universities in Wuhan, a city in central China. The questionnaire includes questions about respondents' basic information (i.e. educational level, discipline, etc.) and their information service requirements. Correlations among users' educational level, academic discipline, retrieval method, and literature use, among other variables, were analyzed.

The results show that most NSTL users are graduate students and young staff members. The number of users who use advanced retrieval and choose the criterion “literature's citation” to judge the literature's value increases slightly with the improvement of the educational level. There is higher demand for literature written in English in the disciplines of natural science, medicine, and engineering, and a certain proportion of demand for materials written in Japanese in the disciplines of medicine and engineering.

The findings suggest that electronic resource producers should offer more foreign literature and that providers should improve the quality of services.

The paper provides suggestions for further improvement of the NSTL to fulfil the information needs and requirements of users.

The purpose of this paper is to report on users' information behaviour in China, a topic which has not been researched extensively. The aim is to help producers and providers collect and develop more electronic resources.

The study investigates users' information behaviour at seven “211 Project” universities in Wuhan, a city in central China. These universities all have access to the resources of the National Science and Technology Library (NSTL). The questionnaire includes questions about respondents' basic identifying information (educational level, job, etc.) and their information service requirements. Correlations among users' education level, users' jobs, users' retrieval methods, literature use, etc. were analysed.

The results show that most NSTL users are graduate students and young staff members. and the number of male users surpasses female ones slightly. The purpose of the utilisation of electronic resources for customers is scientific research, teaching and the need for self‐development. During a year, the demand of users is the highest in March and the lowest in August. The users' knowledge service types include learning the progress of science and technology, citation retrieval and analysis, statistical analysis, intelligent retrieval and knowledge aggregation.

The findings suggest that electronic resource producers should offer more foreign literature and providers should improve the quality of services.

The paper provides suggestions for the further improvement of NSTL to fulfill the information needs and requirements of users.

The purpose of this paper is to discuss issues related to customer churn behavior in digital libraries (DLs) and demonstrate the successful application of Survival Analysis for understanding customer churn status and relationship duration distribution between customers and libraries.

The study applies non-parametric methods of Survival Analysis to analyze churn behaviors of 8,054 customers from a famous Chinese digital library, and a cluster method to make customer segmentation according to customer behavioral features.

The customer churn rate of the given library is very high, so as to the churn hazard in early three months after customer's registration on the web site of the library. There is clear difference in both customer survival time and churn hazard among customer groups. It is necessary to strengthen customer churn analysis and customer relationship management (CRM) for DLs.

The studied samples are mainly based on customers from one digital library and some hypotheses have not been strictly proven due to the absence of relevant empirical researches.

This study provides a reasonable basis for decision making about CRM in DLs.

Most previous researches about information behavior concentrate on information seeking behavior in DLs, seldom discuss customer switching behavior. The paper discusses issues related to customer churn analysis and illustrates the adaptation of Survival Analysis to understand customer churn status and relationship duration distribution in DLs.

The purpose of this paper is to describe the background to Chinese libraries and the general development and new trends in document supply in China.

The service operation, copyright protection and management mechanisms of document supply in China are described. New challenges to it and the responses are also identified.

The role of document supply in China is recognized as important and is developing rapidly as economic constraints on purchasing increase.

The paper will be of interest to all document supply librarians interested in developments in China.

The purpose of the paper is to describe the history of document supply in China and recent developments, locally, regionally and nationally.

Document supply in China is described in detail.

The paper provides insights into the development of document supply in China with practical examples, and suggestions are made for improvement.

Document supply in China is a subject that has been addressed rarely in the international library literature. Also provided is a list of web sites that will be valuable for all those wishing to learn more about Chinese document supply.

The purpose of this paper is to call for the application of marketing in the library area, especially libraries supported by public budget. Draws directly on experiences within the Library of Chinese Academy of Sciences.

Gives a summary of the current situation, analyzes problems and suggests new methods and provides a case study.

Explores and evaluates the use of marketing tools, service promotion experiences and new techniques in a large library context and explores the boundaries between real and virtual libraries and service provision.

A case study of service provision promotion practices, discusses user‐centered web site design, and how market‐oriented problem solutions can help to enhance a library's customer relationships.

The purpose of this paper is to describe a new local interlibrary loan (ILL) system between universities in Beijing, China.

The paper provides a descriptive analysis of the BALIS ILL system.

The paper finds that BALIS ILL has developed rapidly in the past two years but there are still some problems to solve.

This paper will be relevant to librarians interested in resource sharing in China.

The aims of this article are to describe the current status, usage, and acceptance of domestic preprint servers in mainland China by investigating three integrated preprint servers in mainland China. These are the Qiji e‐print archive (Qiji), the Chinese Preprint Server (CPS), Chinese Science Papers Online (CSPO).

This research gives a quantitative analysis of the submission numbers to three preprint servers, the subject distribution and citations. An investigation of university websites and their policies was also carried out.

Preprint submissions have a strong correlation with official promotion and policies. The preprints communication pattern in mainland China concentrates on the disciplines of physics, mathematics and computer science which reflects international preprint communication behaviour. As yet the domestic preprint servers in mainland China attract little attention from excellent scholars and have a low impact on scientific communication.

No author survey was conducted.

This is the first paper to characterize the usage and acceptance of domestic preprint servers in mainland China using a quantitative method.