大英图书馆将古希腊手稿搬上网络

    One of the world's most important caches of Greek manuscripts(手稿) is going online, part of a growing number of ancient documents to hit the Web in recent years.
    The British Library said Monday that it was making more than a quarter of （四分之一的）its 1,000 volume-strong collection of handwritten Greek texts available online free of charge, something curators there hope will be a boon¹ to historians, biblical scholars and students of classical Greece alike.
    Although the manuscripts — highlights of which include a famous collection of Aesopic fables² discovered on Mount Athos in 1842 — have long been available to scholars who made the trip to the British Library's reading rooms, curator Scot McKendrick said their posting to the web was opening antiquity³ to the entire world.
    McKendrick said that London could be an expensive place to spend time poring over the Greek texts' tiny, faded script or picking through hundreds of pages of parchment.
    "Not every scholar can afford to come here weeks and months on end," he said. The big attraction of browsing⁴ the texts online "is the ability to do it at your own desk whenever you wish to do it — and do it for free as well."Although millions of books have been made available online in recent years — notably⁵ through Google Books' mass scanning program — ancient texts have taken much longer to emerge from the archives.
    They don't suffer from the copyright issues complicating⁶ efforts to post contemporary（同时代的同时期的） works to the Web, but their fragility makes them tough to handle. They have to be carefully cracked open and photographed one page at a time, a process the British Library said typically costs about 1 pound ($1.50) per page.
    John Franklin, an associate professor of classics at the University of Vermont, said that the British Library's efforts were "part of a quite general move to making manuscripts available online." "Hundreds of institutions have done or are doing the same," he said, including his university.
    Franklin said it was "wonderful that the general public can have an intimate view of so many manuscripts," but stressed the material's academic applications, noting that it could serve as a teaching aid for students learning to unravel⁷ medieval Greek handwriting, for example.
    The British Library has worked aggressively to put much of its collection on the Internet, from 19th-century newspapers to the jewels of its collection — The Lindisfarne Gospels, a selection of Leonardo da Vinci's sketches⁸ and the Codex Sinaiticus, the oldest surviving complete copy of the Christian⁹ Bible.
    The library's Greek manuscript project was funded by the Stavros Niarchos Foundation, which supports Greek-related initiatives in arts and culture.
    Another batch¹⁰ of about 250 documents is due to be published online in 2012.（本文由在线英语听力室整理编辑）

1 boon   

n.恩赐，恩物，恩惠

参考例句：

• A car is a real boon when you live in the country.在郊外居住，有辆汽车确实极为方便。
• These machines have proved a real boon to disabled people.事实证明这些机器让残疾人受益匪浅。

2 fables   

n.寓言( fable的名词复数 )；神话，传说

参考例句：

• Some of Aesop's Fables are satires. 《伊索寓言》中有一些是讽刺作品。 来自《现代英汉综合大词典》
• Little Mexican boys also breathe the American fables. 墨西哥族的小孩子对美国神话也都耳濡目染。 来自辞典例句

3 antiquity   

n.古老；高龄；古物，古迹

参考例句：

• The museum contains the remains of Chinese antiquity.博物馆藏有中国古代的遗物。
• There are many legends about the heroes of antiquity.有许多关于古代英雄的传说。

4 browsing   

v.吃草( browse的现在分词 )；随意翻阅；（在商店里）随便看看；（在计算机上）浏览信息

参考例句：

• He sits browsing over[through] a book. 他坐着翻阅书籍。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• Cattle is browsing in the field. 牛正在田里吃草。 来自《简明英汉词典》

5 notably   

adv.值得注意地，显著地，尤其地，特别地

参考例句：

• Many students were absent,notably the monitor.许多学生缺席，特别是连班长也没来。
• A notably short,silver-haired man,he plays basketball with his staff several times a week.他个子明显较为矮小，一头银发，每周都会和他的员工一起打几次篮球。

6 complicating   

使复杂化( complicate的现在分词 )

参考例句：

• High spiking fever with chills is suggestive of a complicating pylephlebitis. 伴有寒战的高热，暗示合并门静脉炎。
• In America these actions become executive puberty rites, complicating relationships that are already complicated enough. 在美国，这些行动成了行政青春期的惯例，使本来已经够复杂的关系变得更复杂了。

7 unravel   

v.弄清楚（秘密）；拆开，解开，松开

参考例句：

• He was good with his hands and could unravel a knot or untangle yarn that others wouldn't even attempt.他的手很灵巧，其他人甚至都不敢尝试的一些难解的绳结或缠在一起的纱线，他都能解开。
• This is the attitude that led him to unravel a mystery that long puzzled Chinese historians.正是这种态度使他解决了长期以来使中国历史学家们大惑不解的谜。

8 sketches   

n.草图( sketch的名词复数 )；素描；速写；梗概

参考例句：

• The artist is making sketches for his next painting. 画家正为他的下一幅作品画素描。
• You have to admit that these sketches are true to life. 你得承认这些素描很逼真。 来自《简明英汉词典》

9 Christian   

adj.基督教徒的；n.基督教徒

参考例句：

• They always addressed each other by their Christian name.他们总是以教名互相称呼。
• His mother is a sincere Christian.他母亲是个虔诚的基督教徒。

10 batch   

n.一批(组，群)；一批生产量

参考例句：

• The first batch of cakes was burnt.第一炉蛋糕烤焦了。
• I have a batch of letters to answer.我有一批信要回复。