“As all of us know, Harvard is the world''''s pre-eminent university library,” said Sidney Verba, its director, in a note to colleagues on Monday. “Its holdings of over 15m volumes are the result of nearly four centuries of thoughtful and comprehensive collecting.”
Mr Verba''''s gentle preamble through leather-bound tradition was leading to something momentous.
The next day, he revealed, Harvard was to announce a deal with Google, the internet search engine, to digitise and make searchable a substantial part of its collection.
The dust would be blown off volumes accumulated(v.积聚, 堆积) over hundreds of years and their contents scanned and compressed into online data accessible in thousandths of a second. Stacks of cloistered books would be turned into racks of clustered servers distributing the sum total of human knowledge to anyone with a web connection.
The Google project, which aims to make many of the greatest literary treasures available at the click of a mouse, includes four other top libraries - Oxford''''sBodleian Library, the New York Public Library and those of Michigan and Stanford universities.
At the Bodleian, home to 8m books dating back 500 years, its inclusion in the Google Print project provoked (vt.激怒, 挑拨, 煽动, 惹起, 驱使)comparisons with Gutenberg.
“This could be almost as significant as the invention of the printing press in the sense that a great mass of information is going to be made available much more readily to people all over the world,” said Ronald Milne of Oxford University''''s library services.
Sergey Brin and Larry Page, Google''''s founders, were once students at Stanford working on a digital library project.
“Even before we started Google, we dreamed of making the incredible breadth of information that librarians so lovingly organise searchable online,” said Mr Page.
It seemed to be a genuine meeting of minds, old and new the analogue organisers of the world''''s information handing it on to a digital successor responsible for organising 8 billion web pages according to random search requests.
While no one doubts the nerdy librarian credentials of Google''''s chiefs, nor there altruism(n.利他主义, 利他), there is also some smart business thinking behind the move.
“Books are structured information that might inform [online] services yet to be created, such as question-answering,” says John Battelle, author of a Web blog on the search industry.
Such services would mean revenues(n.收入, 国家的收入, 税收) for Google and, in the meantime, the quality of its results would be improved by the digitisation of millions of books, giving it an advantage over rivals such as Microsoft and Yahoo. Google will also share revenues from relevant advertising displayed next to the books'''' contents.
The project can be viewed as Google making its first serious move as a content provider, bringing structured information assets into its database.
It is already challenging traditional content suppliers in other areas of academia. Google Scholar, launched this year, indexes and cross references scientific, technical and medical journals, posing a threat to professional publishers such as Reed Elsevier and Pearson, owner of the Financial Times. One analyst says Google is well on its way to establishing itself as the first port of call for academic researchers, although it does not yet represent a threat to Reed Elsevier''''s Scopus, a full text-linking abstract and indexing database.
Reed Elsevier says Google Print has the appearance of being “competitive” but that the two companies are engaged in discussions.
Much of Google Print''''s scanned output is likely to be books that are out of copyright and published before 1900. But Mr Battelle argues that Google can still make money from obscure titles; one request for a copy of an out-of-print book at $10-$15 a time would cover its scanning costs.
“Media companies have always focused on the head the big hits and bestseller lists but digital music has shown there''''s a lot of power in the [back-catalogue] tail. There''''s a ludicrously large backlist in books and this could mean a massive new revenue stream.”
The social networking power of the internet should also mean some unlikely titles being discovered and creating their own buzz.
“You are going to see some interesting new hits that haven''''t sold a copy since 1782,” says Mr Battelle. ”This really does fulfil a model of enlightened capitalism and it''''s going to do a lot of good in the world.”
comprehensive(adj.全面的, 广泛的, 能充分理解的, 包容的)
简明中文翻译
“众所周知，哈佛(Harvard)大学拥有全球最负盛名的图书馆，”本周一，哈佛大学理事西德尼•维巴(Sidney Verba)在致同事的一封短笺中写道，“哈佛大学拥有的1500多万册藏书，是将近四个世纪精心积累的完善结晶。”
维巴先生就哈佛藏书所作的温文尔雅的开场白，将拉开重大事件的帷幕。
第二天，他透露，哈佛将宣布与互联网搜索引擎Google签定一份合约，将相当大部分的哈佛图书数字化，使其可供搜索。
尘封了数百年的藏书即将再见天日。图书内容经扫描、压缩后进入网上数据库，在几千分之一秒内即可获得。与世隔绝的成堆图书将变成一排排的服务器，将人类知识的全部传递给所有网民。
Google推出的这个计划，是为了让大家在轻触鼠标后即可获得许多最伟大的文学珍品。合作伙伴还包括另外四大顶尖图书馆，即牛津大学图书馆、纽约国立图书馆、密歇根大学和斯坦福大学图书馆。
牛津大学图书馆共有藏书800万册，历史长达500年。该馆加入Google Print项目，引发了与古登堡(Gutenberg)计划的比较。（注：古登堡计划以免费电子格式在网上提供版权过期而进入公共领域的书籍。）
“Google Print能让全世界的人更容易地获得大量信息。从这种程度上来说，它的重要性几乎能与印刷术的发明相提并论，”牛津大学图书馆服务负责人罗纳德•米尔恩(Ronald Milne)说。
Google创始人赛吉•布林(Sergey Brin)和拉里•佩奇(Larry Page)在斯坦福大学求学期间，曾致力于开发数字图书馆项目。
“早在创建Google以前，我们就曾梦想把图书馆员如此钟爱的丰富图书资源搬到网上，使其可供搜索，”佩奇先生说。
这似乎是新老观念的一次真正汇合：模拟格式世界信息的管理者，将这些信息传递给他们的数字继任，由其按照任意搜索请求对80亿张网页进行整理。
虽然没人会怀疑一丝不苟的Google高层作为图书馆管理员的资质，也不会怀疑他们的无私，但在这一计划的背后也有一些精明的商业理念。
“图书是结构化信息，可能会激发尚未形成的网上服务，例如疑问解答，”搜索行业的网络博客(Blog)作家约翰•巴特勒(John Battelle)说。
这类服务将意味着能为Google带来收入。同时，搜索结果的质量也将借助几百万本图书的数字化得到改进，并赋予它超越微软(Microsoft)、雅虎(Yahoo)等竞争对手的优势。Google还将从刊登在图书内容旁边的相关广告分享广告收益。
该计划可被视为Google向内容提供商迈出的认真的第一步，将结构化信息资产转移到它的数据库中。
这已向其它学术领域的传统内容提供商发起了挑战。今年推出的Google Scholar能对科学、技术和医学期刊进行索引和交叉引用，这对Reed Elsevier以及《金融时报》的母公司培生集团(Pearson)等专业出版商形成了威胁。一位分析师表示，Google正使自己成为学术研究员首先光顾的地方，虽然它尚未对Reed Elsevier开发的 Scopus构成威胁。Scopus是一个完整的文本链接摘要和索引数据库。
Reed Elsevier表示，Google Print看来“具有竞争力”，但两家公司正在忙于商谈。
Google Print扫描输出的许多图书很可能已不受版权保护，而且是1900年前出版的。但巴特勒先生坚持认为，Google仍能从晦涩难懂的书目中赢利。若有客户要求复印一本绝版图书，一次10至15美元的价格就能收回扫描的成本。
“媒体公司总是最关注那些轰动一时的巨著和最畅销图书榜，但数字音乐行业已显示出库存目录的强大力量。书目多得令人匪夷所思，这可能预示一股新的庞大现金流。
互联网的社会联网力量，应该也意味着一些看似不太可能的书目正被发掘，并创造它们自己的轰动效应。
“你将会看到自1782年以来没有售出过一本的有意思的新作，”巴特勒先生说，“这的确符合一个开明的资本主义模型的特点，并将为这个世界带来许多好处。”
