User education in academic libraries of China

For the last 10 years, much progress in higher education, as well as information access has been made. But one of the serious problems is that many users of academic and research libraries are unaware of the importance of scientific and technical information, and lack essential knowledge and skills to locate materials. Therefore, development of library user education has been emphasized and supported by the government in China. For the future users the Ministry of Education has required college and university libraries to develop courses of bibliographic instruction, and has sponsored symposiums for exchange experiences among the university and college libraries. So far, the courses of bibliographic instructions have been established in more than half of the universities and colleges in China.However, for the large numbers of students waiting to obtain user education training, both facilities and instructors are inadequate. It is necessary for schools of library science in China to develop professional course work for the education of instructors in library user education.