“Until then I had thought each book
spoke of the
things, human or
divine, that lie outside books. Now I realized that not infrequently
books speak of books: it is as if they spoke among themselves. In the
light of this reflection, the library seemed all the more disturbing to
me. It was then the place of a long, centuries-old murmuring*, an
imperceptible* dialogue between one parchment* and another, a living
thing, a receptacle* of powers not to be ruled by a human mind, a
treasure of secrets emanated* by many minds, surviving the death of
those who had produced them or had been their conveyors* […] ‘And is a
library then an instrument not for distributing the truth, but for
delaying* its appearance?’”
- Umberto Eco in The Name of the Rose, London: Random
House, 1998,
p.
286.
Task 1Try
to explain the
difference between the following
terms, if there
is
any.
library vs. bookcase vs. bookshop
donation vs. purchase
reading area vs. stacks*
database vs. catalogue
newspaper vs. magazine vs. periodical vs.
journal
publication vs. volume
on-site reference* vs. available on loan*
bibliography vs. publication details
Task 2Match
the texts on the
next page with the names of the
following
libraries.
1. The Moravian Regional Library in Brno
2. The National Library in Sarajevo
3. The National Library of the Czech Republic
4. The Library of Congress in Washington D.C.
5. The Leuven (Louvain) Library
6. The French National Library
7. The Bibliotheca Alexandrina
8. The National Library of China
a) This library is an integrated
cultural complex,
with
libraries, museums, exhibition areas, educational centres, and an
international conference centre. A reception desk is located in the
foyer of the library (where The Hall of Fame is located) in order to
guide newcomers. Visitors are shown the historical background of the
library and the current efforts to design and build the new library as
a revival of the old one.
b) Thislibrary, which turns 200 this
year, began
with fewer than
1000 books. It now holds 115 million items in a number of
formats. "America's oldest national cultural center", this
library was established as a legislative library, and now serves as the
copyright agency of the United States.
c) In 1368, Charles V – "The Wise" – had his own personal
library, which contained 917 manuscripts*. In those days, royal
collections were transient* in nature in that they were irretrievably
dispersed* upon their owner's death. It was not until Louis XI,
(1461-1483) the true founder of this library, that the collection was
consolidated* and never to be dispersed again.
d) The Library has the total floor area of 170,000 square meters,
ranking* first in the national libraries of Asia and fourth in the
world. It has a rich collection of 22,400,000 volumes, in which there
are 270,000 volumes of rare books; 1,600,000 volumes of general ancient
books; and 35,000 pieces of scripted turtle shells and animal bones.
e) In August of 1914 German troops set fire to the library
building and to much of the city. The destruction of the library
aroused international indignation.* Before the First World War had even
ended, committees were formed in both Allied and neutral countries to
collect money and books for the reconstruction of the library. Books
arrived in such numbers that by 1939 there were some 900,000 volumes on
the shelves of the reconstructed library. However, in 1940 when the
Wehrmacht occupied the city, the library went up in flames once again.
After the war, the burnt-out building was restored and the library now
houses more than a million volumes.
f) This traditional university and county library was founded in
1808. With its 3.5 million volumes, it is the second largest library in
the country. The library is specialized in social sciences, medicine,
and technical literature. It also has a valuable historical collection,
including about 1200 incunabula*, 2500 manuscripts, and 33,000 old
prints. The annual acquisition* is about 50,000 volumes; the library
staff is about 170, serving 35,000 users (about 50% of them university
students); and 600,000 items are lent out per year.
g) In 1622 Jesuits began the administration of the university and
to transfer its libraries to the Klementinum. When the Jesuits left
(1773–1777), the university and library remained. Thanks to the efforts
of Count Francis Kinsky, they received the title of Imperial Royal
Public and University Library from Empress Maria Teresia. In 1935 the
library was renamed and a law was passed stipulating the legal deposit
copy duty*.
h) The first shells from bombs hit the library in late August of
1992. Scorched shreds* of pages blew from the burning building and
landed on the streets all over the city; people called them black
butterflies. The library was an early target, but the attack
foreshadowed* the worst of the ethnic cleansing to come. In languages
from Persian to Arabic to Croatian, the multi-ethnic history of the
city and region had been carefully catalogued and stored on the
shelves. Virtually everything was destroyed.
What are the most useful things they provide for
you as an individual? And for society?
Which libraries have you used?
Have you ever visited a foreign library?
What relevance* are libraries in the age of the
Internet?
Should public libraries have a mandate to serve
all citizens?
Task 3 – Reading
- Alexandria
1 The Eastern Harbour of
Alexandria has
been a
crossroads of culture and continents for 2300 years. This is where the
Pharos Lighthouse, one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World,
guided people from all nations safely into port; where Queen Cleopatra
first laid eyes on Julius Caesar. Today, Alexandria is trying to
recapture the spirit of perhaps its richest legacy—the Great Library of
Alexandria—by opening the new Bibliotheca Alexandrina. The ancient
library dominated the ancient world of learning from about the third
century B.C. to the fourth century A.D. The new one is situated on the
Eastern Harbour on or near the site of the original, in the shape of a
massive disc inclined toward the Mediterranean, evoking the image of
the Egyptian sun illuminating the world.
2 "In a world worried about the clash of
civilizations, about war, about hatred and about killing, I think it's
significant that out of Egypt comes this new library, a place of
understanding, learning, tolerance and brotherhood," said Ismail
Serageldin, the library's director.
"Egypt is the cradle of
civilization and the birthplace of three monotheistic religions, so the
library will very much reflect religious tolerance," said Mohammed
Aman, the Bibliotheca's collection advisor. During the 1980s, Egypt and
UNESCO resolved to build the Bibliotheca Alexandrina with the same
universal goals as the ancient one: a focal point* for research, the
advancement of knowledge and the open exchange of ideas.
3 Countries from around the world, especially
the Middle East, contributed to a $220 million-plus building effort by
the U.S. An international spirit still reigns at the Bibliotheca:
Italians and Egyptians are working together to preserve rare
manuscripts; Greeks are helping with antiquities; the French, with a
science museum; and Americans, with computer systems. Dozens of
countries are sending books.
4 Around 295 B.C., the scholar Demetrius of
Phalerum convinced the new pharaoh, Ptolemy I Soter, that Alexandria
could rival Athens as a centre of culture and learning – by
establishing a library that would house all the books in the world.
History says that the Ptolemies became so hungry for knowledge that
they seized* books from every ship that came into harbour. They made a
copy for the ship, but kept the originals for themselves. The library
housed the masterpieces of classical civilization: the works of
Aristotle and Plato; original manuscripts of Sophocles, Aeschylus and
Euripides; Egyptian treatises on astronomy and medicine; Buddhist
texts; and the first translations of the Hebrew scriptures. Historians
believe that Alexandria eventually amassed 700,000 scrolls.*
5 While today the library plans to have a broad
general collection, it isn't trying to gather the entire creative
legacy* of humankind under one roof. The library will try to attract
researchers and scholars from around the world. "It is a vision that
was realized on this very spot over 2300 years ago when the library was
founded," said Serageldin. Alexandria is where Euclid devised geometry;
Herophilus discovered that the brain, not the heart, was the seat of
thought; Aristarchus, 1800 years before Copernicus, determined that the
Earth revolved around the sun; and Eratosthenes set up a simple
experiment that measured the Earth's circumference. In tribute to these
discoveries, the new library features a museum dedicated to science
history, and a large planetarium graces* the entrance.
6 The first and most famous blow to the ancient
library came in 48 B.C. when Julius Caesar laid siege to Alexandria and
set fire to the city. Historians believe that flames consumed about 10
percent of the library. By the middle of the new millennium, the
library had fallen completely. Historians believe that not a single
scroll survives. Today’s opening of the new Bibliotheca Alexandrina
proves that perhaps the most important element of the ancient library
persists — its spirit. And this time the building is fireproof.
Adapted from: Chad Cohen, National Geographic Today,
October 16,
2002.
Exercise 1 Which of the following is the most suitable title for
the article?
a) Clash of Civilizations
b) Old Trouble at Alexandria's New Library
c) Egypt Opens The New Library of Alexandria
d) Famous Egyptian Centre of Research Reopens
e) International Effort
f) The Legacy of the Library Demands High Standards
Exercise 2 According to the article, decide whether the following
statements
are
True or False.
a) The Great Library of Alexandria was one of the Seven Wonders of the
Ancient World.
b) Situated approximately in the same place as the original library,
the new building is a precise copy of the original.
c) The library serves as a symbol of traditional Egyptian religious
tolerance.
d) Some of the main aims of the library focus on investigation,
learning, and the free
exchange of information.
e) More than twenty states are sending publications to the
library.
f) The pharaoh family copied books for the library from every ship that
came into harbour.
g) It is certain that Alexandria finally obtained 700,000
scrolls.
h) Not a single scroll was preserved after the library fire in the 5th
century.
Exercise 3
Why has Alexandria been chosen as the seat of the new
“world”
library?
For how long did the Great Library of Alexandria
represent the
knowledge of the world?
What other functions apart from collecting books did
the Great
Library have?
What other ancient city did Alexandria compete with?
In what context is Julius Caesar mentioned?
What are some differences between the Great Library
of Alexandria
and the new Bibliotheca Alexandrina? (Name at least three.)
How does the author support his idea of “the
international
spirit” of the library?
When was the new Bibliotheca Alexandrina opened?
What facilities does the library offer?
Which continents are never (directly or indirectly)
mentioned in
the text?
Conservation and Restoration
Task 4 Fill in the gaps in the text below with the following
words:
One of the fundamental missions of
libraries is
to
collections so that they may be
communicated and passed on to
generations. Conservation first
of all means
: making sure that collections
are housed in
an
environment which prevents all damage and keeps each item
for future use. This involves :
- maintenance of library buildings, and ensuring that temperature and
conditions in stockrooms remain
stable
-
and fire prevention
- storage quality control
-
the conditions under which
documents are
communicated.
Conservation also means protecting the documents themselves with
appropriate bindings or other specially manufactured protective
. Substitute copies of documents
are now more
and more
used for communication purposes.
Photographic
or
microform
, and - more recently - digital
techniques,
are all used to
the lifetime of particularly
originals. The work involved in
protecting
and
replicating library documents requires a
knowledge of
the history of graphic material, of papers and parchments, inks, and
photographic and audiovisual
. Document lifetimes vary
enormously,
on the nature of each item and
on the
processes used to produce it. Continuous monitoring of the collections
and advanced scientific
are essential in defining the
most appropriate conservation methods in each case.
Adapted from:
http://www.bnf.fr/site_bnf_eng/index.html. Viewed on 6.2.2002
Bibliography
Bibliography can be a list of all the
materials
consulted during
research, written assignments, and other academic texts (referred to
directly or indirectly in the text) written at the end of the work.
Such lists are organised alphabetically and must be complete, accurate,
and consistent* in the use of one style.
Note: Referencing within any work can be done in several ways, though
most people now favour the "Author, date" or "Harvard" referencing
system. To use such quoting from written or any other sources, one must
put the author's surname and the date of publication in the text like
this:
Example: According to Barnes (1996), there is a comprehensive guide to
referencing available in the library.
or
There is a comprehensive guide to referencing available in the library.
(Barnes 1996)
Bibliography Format Examples: those listed below are the most widely
used formats; the styles are many and change. The preferred style of
your teacher and consistency* within a work are the key issues!!!
BOOKS: author – title – place of publication – publisher – year
of
publication – pages
Author (surname first). Title (underlined or in italics).
Place:
Publisher, year, pages.
Gellner, Ernest. Thought and Change. London: Weidenfeld and
Nicolson,
1964, pp. 6-8.
JOURNAL ARTICLES: author – title of the article – full title of the
journal – volume
number – issue number – year of publication – pages
Marotta, Emanuel: ‘Europol’s Role in Anti-Terrorism Policing’, Terrorism
and Political Violence, 11/4, 1999,
pp.15-18.
UNPUBLISHED WORKS: author – title of the work – characteristics of the work
– place
of publication – year of publication – page
Rignall, Martin: Oral Narratives in English and Greek,
unpublished M.A.
thesis, University of Reading, 1991, p. 46.
INTERNET: author – title of the work – the Internet address – date
of viewing–
page
Linz, J.J. and Montero, J.R.: The Party Systems of Spain: Old Cleavages
and New Challenges, http://www.mk.gov.es/researchpapers/no405.htm,
viewed: 05/06/2003, p. 2.
Exercise 1 Look at the bibliographical entries below and state a) whether they are for a book, journal article, an
unpublished
source,
or Internet.
b) what the numbers in parentheses* refer to (publisher, title, etc.)
1) Handler, Richard: Nationalism and the Politics of Culture in Quebec,
London, MacMillan,
1988, pp. 6-8.
2) Connor, Walker. 1984. 'Eco- or ethno-nationalism?', Ethnic and
Racial Studies 7, 3: 342.
3) Hroch, Miroslav. "From National Movement to the Fully-formed Nation:
The Nation-
building Process in Europe", in Balakrishnan, Gopal, eds. Mapping
the
Nation. New York and
London: Verso, 1996: pp. 78-97.
Exercise 2
Look at the following extract from a bibliography and decide in what
ways it is inadequate or incomplete.
1) Kapferer, Bruce. Legends of People, Myths of State: Violence,
Intolerance and Political Culture in Sri Lanka and Australia.
Washington and London: Smithsonian Institution Press.
2) Hutchinson, John. 1987. The Dynamics of Cultural Nationalism: The
Gaelic Revival and the Creation of the Irish Nation State. London: pp.
450-462
3) McKay: 'An exploratory synthesis of the primordial and
mobilisationist approaches to ethnic phenomena', Ethnic and Racial
Studies, 1982. 395-420.
Exercise 3 Look at the following bibliographies. Which of them are
unacceptable
and why?
A
Schlesinger, Philip. 1992. 'Europeanness - a new cultural
battlefield?', Innovation 5, 1: 11 23.
Smith, Anthony D. 1981. The Ethnic Revival in the Modern World.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Smith, Anthony D. 1986. The Ethnic Origins of Nations. Oxford:
Blackwell.
Smith, Anthony D. 1988. 'The myth of the "modern nation" and the myths
of nations', Ethnic and Racial Studies 1, 1: 1-26.
Smith, Anthony D. 1989. 'The origins of nations', Ethnic and Racial
Studies 12, 3: 340-67.
Smith, Anthony D. 1991. National Identity. Harmondsworth:
Penguin.
Smith, Anthony D. 1992. 'National identity and the idea of European
unity', International Affairs 68, 1: 55-76.
B
Anderson, Benedict. 1983. Imagined Communities: Reflections on the
Origins and Spread of
Nationalism. London: Verso. P.78
Armstrong, John. 1982. Nations before Nationalism. Chapel Hill:
University of North
Carolina Press. P.58
Greenfeld, Liah. "Nationalism in Western and Eastern Europe Compared,"
in Can Europe
Work? Germany & the
Reconstruction of Post-communist Societies, eds. Stephen
E.
Hanson and Willfried Spohn.
Seattle & London: University of Washington Press, 1995.
Hastings, Adrian. The Construction of Nationhood: Ethnicity,
Religion
and Nationalism.
Cambridge and New York: Cambridge
University Press, 1997. pp. 2-5.
C
Breuilly, John. 1993. Nationalism and the State. 2nd edn.
Manchester:
Manchester University Press.
Campbell, J. and Sherrard, P. 1968. Modern Greece. London:
Ernest Benn.
Connor, Walker. Ethno-nationalism: The Quest for Understanding.
Princeton University Press.
Hobsbawm, Eric. 1990. Nations and Nationalism since 1780.
Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, pp. 26-31.
Gellner, Ernest. 1973. 'Scale and nation', 3: 1, 17.
Tipton, Leon (ed.). 1972. Nationalism in the Middle Ages. New
York:
Tonkin, Elisabeth, Maryon McDonald and Malcolm Chapman (eds.). 1989. History
and Ethnicity. ASA Monographs 27, London:
Routledge.
Kitromilides, Paschalis. 1989. "'Imagined communities" and the origins
of the national question in the Balkans', European History
Quarterly 19, 2: 149-92.
Grammar – Conditionals
Exercise 1 Complete or answer the conditional sentences below.
a) If the publication I need is only available as an
on-site reference,
I will …
b) If I go to the library today, I will …
c) If he needs a book that is only available in a foreign library, he
will have to …
d) What would you do if you lost or damaged a book from
a library?
e) What would you do if you inherited* a great number of books?
f) If you became the university library manager, what would you change?
g) If you had the opportunity, which world library would you like to
use for your studies?
h) What would the world have been like if Gutenberg had
not invented
the printing press?
i) What would have been different in the development of world
science if the Great Library of Alexandria had not burnt down?
j) What could have happened if all the Czech National Library archives
had been situated close to river banks in the summer of 2002?
k) What would have been different in the world of libraries if the
Internet had not been invented?
Exercise 2 Fill in the gaps with suitable forms of the suggested
verbs.
If the international community ____________, the
library in
Alexandria ____________. (not to help, not to reopen)
If you ____________ to consult microfilms or rare
books, you
____________ use special reading rooms. (wish, have to)
If it ____________against copyright laws,
____________the whole
book. (not to be, copy)
If you __________ the book a month ago, you
____________ it by now.
(request, read)
If the Ptolemies ____________ today, the new library
____________them. (live, surprise)
I wish I ____________ this place last semester. (know)
If you ____________ the word, _________it ________in
the dictionary.
(not to understand, look up)
In recent years, the modernization of the library
____________
possible if the staff ____________. (not to be, train)
Egypt ____________ the right place for "an
institution of dialogue,
tolerance, understanding and rationality" if its religious authorities
____________ banning books. (be, not to keep)
I have got lost. If only I ____________ the right way
to the
Moravian Regional Library. (take)
Vocabulary
1.
murmuring
šeptání
2.
imperceptible
nevnímatelný,
nepostřehnutelný
3.
parchment
pergamen
4.
receptacle
schránka
5.
emanated
vycházející
6.
conveyors
nositelé
7.
*to delay
zdržovat,
pozdržet
8.
stacks (library)
sklad knih,
který je přístupný veřejnosti
9.
on-site reference
prezenční výpůjčka
10.
available on loan
absenční výpůjčka
11.
manuscript
rukopis
12.
*transient
přechodný, dočasný
13.
irretrievably dispersed
nenávratně rozptýlen
14.
to consolidate
sjednotit
15.
*to rank
řadit
16.
to arouse indignation
vzbudit rozhořčení, pobouření
17.
incunabula (incunabulum -
singular)
inkunábule, prvotisky
- books printed
before 1501 or
work from an early
period
18.
acquisition
přírůstek
19.
stipulating legal deposit duty
právně určující povinný výtisk
20.
scorched shreds
spálené cáry papíru
21.
*to foreshadow
předvídat
22.
*relevance
důležitost pro danou
věc
23.
*focal point
hlavní bod
24.
*to seize
uchopit
25.
scroll
svitek
26.
*legacy
dědictví
27.
to grace
zdobit, poctít
28.
*to prolong
prodloužit
29.
*vulnerable
citlivý
30.
*consistent; consistency
důsledný, v souladu; důslednost
31.
to inherit
zdědit
32.
parentheses U.S. (xxx); round
brackets U.K.
(xxx); brackets [xxx]
