The Korean library system began during the difficult period when the country was under Japanese occupation, followed by the Korean War. Because the system began amidst a barren cultural environment, or a relative cultural wilderness, the only choice was to aim toward quantitative growth. Nevertheless, Korean libraries have been under continuous pressure both domestically and internationally due to the lack of a sound infrastructure. Our nation as a whole has made tremendous efforts to lose the stigma of an underdeveloped culture or of a country that neglects culture in general.
Following 1996, when Korea became a member of the OECD, these pressures increased. Whenever the number of public libraries, or the number of volumes per capita, was cited as a benchmark or alternative index to assess a nation's cultural advancement, the government, along with the library sector, felt uneasy. Behind our country's glorious accomplishments of high growth in socio‐economic terms, a shadow deepened over other areas. One such dark area is the striking deficiency in library infrastructure and public support for the library system. The government began taking proactive policy measures to address the issue in 2000. Prime examples of this proactive approach are the Master Plan for Library Informatization and the Master Plan for Advancing Libraries, which were established by the Ministry of Culture and Tourism in 2000 and 2002, respectively. Also, in 2005 the Ministry of Education and Human Resources Development set forth its Master Plan for Promoting School Libraries and the Plan for Promoting University Libraries, while the National Library formulated its National Library of Korea 2010 plan. With more and better libraries in our country the number of persons a library was established to serve was reduced to 93,957, while the number of volumes per capita held by public libraries increased to 0.94 by the end of 2005. These figures, however, fall far below those observed in other culturally advanced nations.
Even before we could properly address the issue of establishing a library infrastructure comparable to other advanced countries and of creating an advanced culture of using libraries, another urgent challenging issue emerged. The policy that had been followed for more than half a century, which focused on increasing the number of volumes, resulted in a lack of space in which to actually store the books. In order to manage libraries effectively, and also to reduce the opportunity costs of users, it became necessary to dispose of materials deemed “obsolete” – those no longer considered important to preserve or those rarely used by the public. This practice is not a simple matter, however, especially given the fact that quantitative indices are used to compare competitive advantage among different nations.
Even so, the issue of “obsoledge” (“obsolete knowledge”) that has emerged as the Achilles heel for the domestic library sector demands immediate attention; at the same time, the issue of insufficient storage space also requires an immediate solution. Against this backdrop, this paper will examine the current situation of our public libraries, centering on the issue of storage space, and will present some possible solutions.