Book People Mailing List的告别信

作者: 阮一峰

日期: 2007年12月 3日

个星期前,已经运行了10年的邮件列表Book People Mailing List宣布将在11月底关闭。

我很舍不得,因为我订阅这个邮件列表7年了,它已经是我生活的一部分了。就像有人喜欢看电视,我喜欢看这个邮件列表。

上个周末,我收到了管理员John Mark Ockerbloom发来的告别信。我读后有一点感动,就将它译成了中文,请大家一起来看看,真正网上的讨论组是什么样的。

对了,信中提到的玛丽是John的妻子。

====================

So long, and thanks....

再见,还要感谢......

We had some new friends over for dinner last night, and towards dessert, the conversation turned to books, and eventually to all the books that were now available online. They were quite interested in the travel accounts by women that Mary had been putting online, and remarked "You must have a passion for this." When they found out that over 300 books had been republished on her site, on a completely volunteer basis, they said "that's a *lot* of passion!"

昨晚,我们同一些新朋友聚餐。甜点上来的时候,我们谈到了书籍,发现这些年来,终于所有的书都上网了。朋友们对一些女作家的游记很感兴趣,它们是玛丽放上网的。朋友们评论说:"你们对这种事一定有很大的热情。"后来,当他们知道玛丽已经将300多种书籍放上网,而且完全是志愿的,他们感叹道:"那真的是不同一般的热情啊!"

I think that could be said about a lot of the people on the list. Whether it's the regular posters, or the folks who mostly lurk and occasionally send us email, this has been a group that's been passionate about books, what they can do for people, and the importance of doing the best job we can to make them available to as many people as possible.

我想这样的评价适用于这个邮件列表上的许多人。不管是那些积极发言的成员,还是那些只潜水不发言或者偶尔发言的成员,所有人对于书籍都有着不同一般的热情。我们都在思考,我们能为其他人做些什么,如何尽我们所能让尽可能多的人得到书籍。

We've built libraries of not just hundreds but tens of thousands of books with volunteer labor. (And some of us have quietly been building at the millions-of-books scale.) We've discussed the need for copyright reform (with one of us famously taking his case all the way to the US Supreme Court). We've proposed and argued about the best ways to produce and provide the most useful, high-quality book collections. We've done fresh translations of classic works, organized large teams of proofreaders and encyclopedia writers, and written and demonstrated new software and formats for preparing, viewing, and exploring books online. We've helped out our fellow listmembers when they've had posted questions about some problem they were having preparing or using books. And sometimes we've just talked about the books we liked, and what made them special for us.

我们用自己志愿的劳动,建设了网上的电子图书馆,藏书多达几万种。(我们中有人甚至在建设百万种规模的图书馆。)我们讨论了版权制度改革的必要性。(我们的一个成员甚至将版权官司上诉到了联邦最高法庭。)我们探讨了制作和传播电子书的最佳方式。我们自己动手翻译了一些经典著作,组织了大规模的校对和百科全书编辑人员。我们编写了新的软件和新的格式,以便于在网上制作、浏览和查找书籍。当我们中有人在邮件列表中提出他遇到的电子书制作和使用方面的困难时,其他人会热情地给予帮助。有时,我们还会谈起我们自己喜爱的书籍,以及为什么这些书对我们个人有着特殊的意义。

I've enjoyed hearing and participating in these conversations, and am happy to have met you all virtually (one perk of taking the subscription requests is you hear from the lurkers as well the posters), and have been fortunate enough to meet some of you in person as well. If you browse through the archives, which will remain online at

http://onlinebooks.library.upenn.edu/webbin/bparchive

我很享受于倾听和参与这些对话,并且很高兴在网上遇到你们所有这些人。(作为管理员的一个好处,就是能够看到那些潜水的成员发来的要求订阅邮件列表的Email。)我也很荣幸地与你们中的一些人有过当面的接触。我们所有的发言都保留在网上:

http://onlinebooks.library.upenn.edu/webbin/bparchive

you'll see how far things have come since this list started out in 1997, and how much potential there still is to do more.

从这些发言中,你们可以看到,自从这个邮件列表从1997年创建以来,我们已经做过了多少事,并且还有美好的前景去创造更多的东西。

So I very much appreciate people continuing in the same spirit as we started out. I'm particularly thankful to Kent Larsen for starting up Book Futures, which I see has already begun activity), and to the various other listmembers who have recently started other lists related to online books and the sharing of knowledge. And I hope those of you who are so inclined will stop by my blog at Everybody's Libraries, or Mary's Celebration blog. Again, I've left pointers to all these places, and to the archives of this list, at

http://onlinebooks.library.upenn.edu/bplist/

所以,我非常欣慰的看到,有人愿意延续从我们这里开创的道路。我要特别感谢Kent Larsen,他创建了一个新的邮件列表Book Futures,我发现那里已经有初步活跃的迹象。其他成员也有在近期创建邮件列表的打算。我还希望你们能经常来看看我和玛丽的Blog。让我重申一遍,所有这些网址我都留在了一个网页上,它在

http://onlinebooks.library.upenn.edu/bplist/

and am happy to take corrections and updates there.

只要有变化,我就会更新这个网页。

So I wish all the Book People farewell for now, and hope that we and our books will meet again soon.

最后,我要和所有Book People邮件列表的成员说再见了,希望不久后我们还会再相会。

John Mark Ockerbloom
Moderator, Book People mailing list

2007年11月30日

(完)

留言(2条)

虽然我不太了解这些邮件列表的运作方式,但他们都是爱书的人,比起他们我们显得浮躁的很。

能给人做出贡献,分享给别人,哪怕一点也是好事。

知识应该向所有人敞开大门 ! 支持知识分享 ! 这是人类共同的财富 !

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