The Symposium on the Twelfth Five-Year Plan of the National Library of China was held from 21 January to 22 January in Beijing. In the plenary session held in the morning of 21 January, Zhou Heping, vice minister of the Ministry of Culture and director of the NLC, delivered an important speech. Zhan Furui, secretary of the CPC Committee of the NLC and executive deputy director of the NLC, presided over the plenary session. Directors of related department of the Ministry of Culture, principals of the institutes directly under the Ministry of Culture, directors of provincial libraries and some of the sub-provincial city libraries, library and information professionals, all of the members of the NLC leadership, and the NLC middle-level leaders attended the plenary session.

Firstly, Zhou Heping extended cordial welcome to the attendees. And then he introduced the main work of the NLC in 2010, and analyzed the development environment of the NLC librarianship in the twelfth five-year plan period. He pointed out that the Party Central Committee paid great attention to cultural development, which provided good policy environment for the librarianship development; people's growing spiritual and cultural needs provided powerful incentives for librarianship development; the development of modern technologies provided great technical support for the librarianship development; the international librarianship development provided broad space for librarianship development. All of those provided rare opportunity for the NLC librarianship development.

At the same time, the librarianship also encountered a lot of problems. For example, the exterior environment of library development needed to be improved; the legal system for library development was not sound; the librarianship development of public libraries was not balanced; the talent construction needed urgent improvement, and so on, so in the twelfth five-year plan period, the NLC would shoulder arduous tasks. He showed that the NLC librarianship was the mutual cause the whole society, and the development of NLC librarianship needed the contributions of the NLC whole staff, and even the wisdom of the library community and other related industries.

As to the main tasks in the twelfth five-year plan period, Zhou Heping introduced the preliminary conceptions: first, the NLC would construct the repository of the nation's publications, the strategic reserve stacks of nation's publications, and featured knowledge base groups; second, the NLC would strengthen the development of digital resources, and construct a digital library service system based on multi-networks, multi-terminals and full-media; third, the NLC would establish a multi-level service system, so as to improve the public culture service ability; fourth, the NLC would actively take part in and undertake the national key cultural projects; fifth, the NLC would strengthen the exchange and cooperation with national and international library community, playing its leading role in national library community and enlarging its influence in international library affairs; and finally, the NLC would strengthen scientific research work and talents cultivation, so as to cultivate professional librarians with strong competitiveness.

Directors of related department of the Ministry of Culture and principals of the institutes directly under the Ministry of Culture, including Sun Ruofeng, Zhou Qingfu, Zhao Wen, Wang Feng, Yu Qun, Dong Junxin, Zhang Yafang, Wang Nengxian, Kong Fanzhuo, and Zhang Yanbo, attended the conference and addressed a speech respectively. They showed that, the fact that the NLC was actively planning the Outline of the Twelfth Five-Year Plan of the National Library of China was very timely and necessary, which represented that the NLC paid great attention to the culture planning work. The attendees put forward suggestive ideas for the development of the NLC in terms of scientific research initiation, service innovation, international exchange and talents cultivation.

In the afternoon of 21 January, in the panel sessions, the attendees spoke out freely and put forward suggestions actively, highly appraising the spirit of Zhou Heping's speech and the ideas of the Outline of the Twelfth Five-Year Plan of the National Library of China, and then by combing the cultural enterprise development trend and the current status of different libraries, proposed the suggestions and advice for the NLC on the following aspects, i.e. the orientation of the NLC, how to promote the formulation of library law, how to strengthen the talent cultivation of the public libraries, and so on.

In the morning of 22 January, a plenary session was held, which was hosted by Zhou Heping. Chu Shuqing, Xie Lin and Xu Jianye made a report respectively in the plenary session on behalf of their panels. And then Liu Xiaoqin, inspector of Department of Community Culture, the Ministry of Culture, addressed a speech in the plenary session, which highly appraised the ideas of the Outline of the Twelfth Five-Year Plan of the National Library of China, and Zhou Heping's speech in the plenary session on 21 January.

Finally, Zhan Furui made a summary speech for the symposium. He said that this symposium was held successfully, exceeding the expectations. To some extent, the symposium was not only a Symposium on the Twelfth Five-Year Plan of the National Library of China, but also a Symposium on the Twelfth Five-Year Plan of the National Public Libraries. And then he affirmed the preparations of the attendees, and summarized three characteristics of Zhou Heping's speech.

In the symposium, Zhou Heping pointed out that the NLC would carefully consider the attendees' ideas and suggestions, and then formulate the Outline of the Twelfth Five-Year Plan of the National Library of China based on those ideas and suggestions.

The NLC had done investigations on the twelfth five-year plan in 2009, and formulated the Draft of the Outline of the Twelfth Five-Year Plan of the National Library of China based on the investigations. The NLC aimed to extensively ask for opinions on outline formulation and the key work in 2010 from the attendees through the symposium, so as to promote the sustainable and stable development of the NLC librarianship.