LIBRARY

The library is older than the book as we know it, older than paper, older than print. It extends back to the scrolls, papyri, and clay tablets that appear near the dawn of writing—back to ancient Mesopotamian and Egyptian civilizations. Through all the centuries of its existence the library has had THREE main functions: to collect, to preserve, and to make available. In each of these the library is an essential instrument for making real the great inherent potentialities of the book and as predecessors.

图书馆

    正如我们所知道的，图书馆比书籍更古老，比纸张，比印刷更古老。它可一直追溯到接近文字的黎明出现前的卷轴、纸莎草，以及泥板—追溯到古老的美索不达米亚和埃及的文明。纵观它存在的所有世纪，图书馆具有三个主要功能：收集、保存和提供使用。在每个方面，图书馆都是使书籍及其前身的巨大潜力成为现实必不可少的工具。

An individual book, scroll, or codex is a powerful thing in itself. But its full potency can be achieved only when it is a part of a well-selected aggregate of books. The reader entering an adequate library is immediately endowed with an unparalleled power. He can pursue to its depth a study of his choice. He can translate himself to whatever time and place he will. He becomes not the servant of a given view or the prisoner of a single dogma, but a master over an empire of knowledge. A library of a thousand books brought together serves a function different from and far greater than any that can be served by a thousand volumes in separate places.

一本单独的书籍、卷轴，或古抄本自身就是一件有力的东西。但其全部的效力只有在它是精选书籍集合成一部分时才能现实。进入一个适当图书馆的读者立即被赋予了无与伦比的力量。他可以进行他选择的深入研究。他可以使自己转移到他愿意的任何时间和地点。他不再成为给定观点的仆人或单一教条的囚徒，而是支配知识帝国的主人。汇集了千本书籍图书馆的服务功能不同于，并且远大于任何在不同地方的一千卷书籍可提供的功能。

So with preservation. Books endure as most works of man do not. They speak not only from one man to another, from one culture to another, but from one generation, one age, to another. Books provide the union of understanding that links the generations, makes it possible to share human experience down through time, and casts our vision of life forward into a future we shall not see. And, again, the library is the essential instrument for giving reality to the potential of books for immortality.

保存亦如此。书籍经久不衰，正如人类的大多数作品不具备的那样。它们不仅从一个人说到另一个人，从一种文化到另一种文化，而且从一代人、一个时代到另一代人、另一个时代。书籍提供了连接几代人的理解联盟，使随时间延续分享人类的经验成为可能，并且将我们对生活的想象投射到我们看不到的未来。再有，图书馆是给予书籍成为现实而不朽的必不可少的工具。

The library, more than any other instrument of society, opens to public use the treasury embodied in books. Without libraries only the affluent would have access to a wide range of books, and even a man of great wealth could command only a fraction of the intellectual riches open to any user of a reasonably good library.

图书馆，超过任何其它的社会工具，用书籍中体现的宝藏向公众开放。没有图书馆，只有富人才会接触到各种各样的书籍，甚至是一个拥有巨额财富的人也只能控制一个向任何用户开放的，相当不错的图书馆的智力财富的一小部分。

These enduring functions of the library have been profoundly affected by changes in the technology by which words are embodies in physical forms. Before the invention of printing, manual reproduction of texts did not allow the accumulation of large quantities of material. Libraries were few, their collections small, their users only a handful. They were an indispensable means to the preservation and revival of learning, but they could not reach out to a society that was almost entirely illiterate.

图书馆的这些持久功能受到了以物理形式所体现的文字在技术变化中的深刻影响。在印刷术发明之前，手工复制文字不允许大量材料的积累。图书馆少，馆藏量小，它们的用户只有极少数的人。它们是保存和复兴学问不可或缺的手段，但它们无法向几乎完全是文盲的社会提供帮助。

The invention of printing in the 15the century first made possible the creation of a significant number of relatively large collections of books. But the modern role of the library did not begin until the latter part of the 19^th century. The library then responded to THREE concurrent and related developments: the emergence of an urban industrial society that required a generally literate population; a serious commitment of the state to free, universal, compulsory education; and the development of high-speed, steam-powered rotary presses and mechanical methods of producing paper from wood pulp, inventions that made it possible to produce books, magazines, and newspapers for everyone. Print became a mass medium, and the public library became the principal instrument for making books available to the people at large.

十五世纪印刷术的发明首先使创造大量相对较大的书籍收藏成为可能。但图书馆的现代作用直到十九世纪下半叶才开始。然后，图书馆回应了三个同时发生且相关的发展：城市工业社会的出现，需要普遍识字的人口；国家对自由、普遍、义务教育的认真承诺；以及高速的、蒸汽驱动的轮转印刷机和用木浆生产纸张的机械方法的发展，这些发明使得为每个人生产书籍、杂志以及报纸成为可能。印刷品成为了一种大众媒体，而公共图书馆成为了向广大人民提供书籍的主要工具。

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The same technology that has transformed the rest of our lives has transformed communication as well. Early in the 20 century it became possible to record sound and motion. Later, radio and television made it possible to assemble audiences of tens of millions to witness living actuality. At the other extreme from these mass forms of communication, various forms of duplication, some in microreproduction, have made it possible to produce separate works for audiences of hundreds or dozens, or even single individuals. The digital computer has provided a massive capacity to store bits of information and an almost infinite capacity to manipulate, arrange, and select items committed to its memory. Where once information was preserved either in manuscript or in conventionally printed books and periodicals, it may now exist also in typescripts, mimeo-graphic or multilithed reproductions, on films, tapes, or punched cards, on holograms or microcards, on cassettes or disks, on microfiche fixing millions of characters on a tiny sheet of film, or in the pattern of electrons in a computer’s memory core.

转变了我们生活的某个部分的相同技术也改变了沟通方式。在二十世纪初，记录声响和运动成为了可能。随后，收音机和电视使聚集数千万观众见证鲜活的现实成为可能。在这些大众沟通形式的另一个极端，各种形式的复制，有些是微缩复制，使得为数百或数十个观众，甚至为单一的个体制作单独的作品成为可能。数字计算机提供了大规模的容量来存储信息，以及几乎无限的容量来操作、安排和选择项目提交至其内存中。曾经，信息要么存储在手抄本中，要么按惯例存储在印刷的书籍和期刊中，现在，它也可以存储于打字稿、油印品或胶印复制品中，存在胶片、磁带，或打孔卡中，存在全息影像或微卡上，存在盒式录音带或磁卡中，在缩微胶片上将数百万个字符存储在一小胶片上，或以电子模式存在计算机内存中。

The great quantity of information now being made available has the potential to free man, to enable him to shape the world to his choosing, to conquer his ills and deprivations. But it can imprison him, too. The flood of information, if unorganized and uncontrolled, can obscure and confuse instead of clarifying and informing. Mass media give unprecedented power to those who manipulate them.

现在大量可用的信息有可能使人自由，使人能够按照他自己的选择塑造世界，征服他的问题和匮乏。但它也可能束缚他。如果无条理和不受控制，信息的洪流可能代替澄清和告知，使人费解和迷惑。大众传媒对于那些操纵它们的人赋予了前所未有的操控力。

All these developments place new kinds of demands on the library and open new opportunities to it. The library assembles information from countless sources and places it at the command of the individual user. It sustains individual freedom of inquiry and opinion. At the same time, it supports vastly expanded educational systems. The number of children in elementary schools in the United States increased by 45% between 1950 and 1980. Increasingly they were being taught in ways that required them to make use of libraries, and thousands of new elementary school libraries had to be created during those decades to serve their needs. High school enrollments increased by 130% in the same years, and new forms of instruction again demanded a vast expansion of library facilities. But the most dramatic increases came at the college and university level. In 1940 there were 1.5 million students in post-high school institutions in the United States. By 1980 the number had risen to approximately 11 million.

所有这些发展对图书馆提出了新的要求，并为其开启了新机会。图书馆从无数的来源聚集信息，并将其置于单一用户的控制下。它支撑了个人探询和意见的自由。同时，它极大地支持了扩展的教育系统。在20世纪50年代至80年代，美国的小学儿童数量增加了45%。他们越来越来多地以要求他们使用图书馆的方式进行教学，在那几十年里，必须建立数千个新的小学图书馆来服务他们的需要。同年，高中的入学登记增加了130%，而且新的教学形式再次要求图书馆设施的大规模扩张。但最引人注目的增长出现在学院和大学阶段。在1940年，美国有150万学生在后高中的机构中。到1980年该数字上升到大约1100万。

Heavy demands were place on libraries to serve the hundreds of new institutions and millions of new students in higher education. An even more complex responsibility came from the expansion of the curriculum in new technologies and such fields as Slavic and Asian studies and the number of institutions and fields in which the Ph. D. was offered and advanced research was carried out.

为服务数百家新机构，以及数百万高等院校的新生对图书馆提出了很高的要求。更加复杂的责任来自新技术课程的扩展和像斯拉夫和亚洲研究这样的领域，以及其中提供博士学位和进行高级研究的机构和领域的数量。

Libraries also faced the necessity of developing bibliographic tools to cope with the mass and variety of new materials and of devising means of using the computer and new reproduction techniques for this purpose. At the same time ways had to be found to house the bewildering array of new form, fit them into the organization of collections, and make them available to users. Beyond this revolutionary expansion of collections and equally revolutionary developments in bibliographic control was the prospect of even more sweeping changes. These involved new developments in reproduction methods and facsimile transmission in combination with the computer, and the wiring of homes and offices for cable transmission to provide new types of service by on-demand production of facsimile copies.

图书馆也面临着发展书目工具以应对大量和种类繁多的新材料，并为此目的设计使用计算机和新复制技术的方法。同时，必须找到方法来容纳令人眼花缭乱的大量新形式，将它们纳入馆藏的组织中，并使其可供用户使用。超越这种革命性的馆藏扩展和书目控制方面同样具有革命性的发展是更加彻底的变化前景。

Concern for development of libraries and library services in the interest of social, cultural, political, and economic betterment has been worldwide, especially since World War II. How that concern is being expressed and implemented is a main subject of the various sections of this article.

尤其自二次大战以来，为改善社会、文化、政治、以及经济，全世界都关注着图书馆和图书馆服务的发展。如何表达和实施这一关切是本文不同部分的主题。

                                                   DAN LACY

                   U. S. National Advisory Commission on Libraries

                                                      丹·莱西

                                     美国国家图书馆咨询委员会

                                           2024年9月11日译

（译者注：该词条位列《大美百科全书》1985年版，第17卷，第307页至309页）