In the middle and late 1960s, the emergence of information technology with electronic computers as the core brought profound changes to the library and information service. Information retrieval and library automation were put into use in the United States successively, marking that the global library undertaking entered a new and revolutionary stage of development (Shen 2016). In 1973, the Chinese library delegation visited the United States and began to pay attention to the application of information technology in library and information work and promptly introduced it into China. In August 1974, in view of issue of computer processing of Chinese character information, the then State Planning Commission approved the national key scientific and technological project “Chinese Character Information Processing System Project” (“project 748” for short), which consists of three subprojects: precision Chinese editing and typesetting system, Chinese information retrieval system, and Chinese communication system. Among them, the development of “Chinese information retrieval system” was undertaken by the library and information system represented by the Institute of Scientific and Technical Intelligence of China (now the Institute of Scientific and Technical Information of China, referred to as ISTIC), and the computer application of library and information work in China started from then on (Shen 2016).