阅读理解
①What is a place where you could find
old pictures of camels carrying people to Mecca, Saudi Arabia (沙特阿拉伯麦加),and also books about ancient Aztecs(阿芝 特克人) in Mexico ? It is all found in the
World Digital Library (WDL). Its collection is available on the Internet.
②The librarian of the United States
Congress, James Billington, established the WDL in 2009. And John Van Oudenaren
is the director. They want it to include items that are both interesting and
important, which encourages them to look for things from each country, each
culture and each civilization. There are 170 partners in 79 countries sending
material to it, including national or university libraries, museums and other
cultural organizations.
③The library has 8,000 items, including
whole books, ancient writings, music and photographs. Every item is annotated (注解)in the 6 official languages of the
United Nations: English, Arabic, French, Spanish, Chinese, Russian plus
Portuguese (葡萄牙语).
④Anyone may search the World Digital
Library by subject, time period, kind of document or area of the world, whose
website is www.wdl.org. Since 2009, 25 million people have visited the website
from 250 places. The greatest number is from Spanish-speaking countries. The
users include schools, researchers and anyone interested. A teacher from New
York City said happily, “It is really wonderful to have a site where every kid
in the class, no matter which country he/she is from or where his/her parents
were from could search and find something about that country.”
⑤Mussa Maravl is a researcher for the
WDL from Sudan, who works with all the materials that are in Arabic. He
recently published rare photographs of Mecca from 1885. “These camels are, you
know, lying their heads on the ground, which is very unusual for a camel. It
means these camels have traveled so long, so far and half of those are very
thin, too, meaning they have exhausted all the fat they have stored.”
⑥Mussa Maravl believes the library
provides tools for understanding, especially among Arabs, Muslims and the
United States. He says the WDL is posting many items about important
developments in Arabic and Islamic science.