In the business of theology it is hard not to be controversial - Jurgen Moltmann

Friday 30 November 2007

全球書籍共多少?how many books out there?

The Universal Digital Library (a joint project involving academic libraries in Egypt, India, China, and the USA) aims at digitising ALL books that have ever been published in the world throughout history.  By now they have accomplished 1.5% of the work by digitising 1.5 million books, meaning that there are about 100 million titles out there.  Google Book Search is of course fast and efficient if you have specific books in mind, but it is predominantly in English.  The vision and scale of UDL is colossal.

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全世界有史以來總共出過多少書?

如果根據Universal Digital Library的數字計算,應該是一億種。(當然是指100,000,000 book titles而非copies of books啦。)

Universal Digital Library是個跨國合作計畫,由埃及阿歷山大圖書館 (Bibliotheca Alexandrina),印度科學院 (Indian Institute of Science),中國浙江大學,和美國Carnegie Mellon University合作,由2002年開始,逐步把全世界古往今來曾經出版過的所有書籍,全部電子掃描,儲存成數碼(數字)檔案,讓世界上任何人閱讀。

兩天前,他們剛宣布今年超額達標,本來預算2007年會掃描完成一百萬本,但如今已經做了一百五十萬本,是世界上所有曾經出現過的書籍的1.5%。

如果你心目中有固定的書要找來看,那麼目前透過Google Book Search肯定比這個UDL更容易更快找到你要的,可是它的長遠力量非常厲害。Google Book Search是一面倒的以英文書和英語國家的圖書館藏書為主 (雖然也有歐洲日本的圖書館參與),UDL卻是跨文化跨語言的。

昨天便碰上1920年代中國出版的 《當代名人書信集》,讀了幾頁,有論中國少年月刊的,有胡適寫給陳獨秀的信,可窺當時歷史國情,十分有趣。

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