紐時賞析／梵蒂岡圖書館數位化 吸引全球讀者

A Global Effort to Bring Rare Books In Rome to an Online Audience

梵蒂岡圖書館數位化 吸引全球讀者

Modern-day church scholars may find the going easier. Some of the texts at the

library of the Pontifical Oriental Institute, a graduate school in Rome

dedicated to the study of the Eastern branch of Christianity, have just been

digitized and will soon be at the fingertips of a global audience.

現今教會學者可能發現事情變容易了。位在羅馬、致力研究東方基督教教會的研究所「宗座東方學院」一部分書籍剛完成數位化，很快就能掌握在全球讀者指間。

The first digitized versions will be available to the public in mid-2022, the

product of a charitable initiative that connected the institute with

technology companies in the United States and Germany.

第一批數位化版本將於2022年年中向大眾開放，這是一項慈善倡議的產物，將該學院與美國及德國科技公司結合。

The companies, said the Rev. David Nazar, the institute’s rector, understood

the project's value. Many of the books come from countries such as Syria,

Lebanon and Iraq, where turmoil put entire collections at risk. Others come

from countries where authoritarian censorship was equally threatening.

該學院院長納扎爾神父說，這些公司明白這個計畫的價值。許多書籍來自敘利亞、黎巴嫩或伊拉克等國家，這些國家的戰爭或其他動亂令整個收藏面臨風險，其他來自威權政府審查制度國家的書籍同樣面臨威脅。

“We’re not a hospital, we’re not in the fields of Syria,” he said, “but we

have students that come from there, who study here because our resources

haven’t been destroyed by war.”

他說：「我們不是醫院，我們不在敘利亞的戰場上，但我們有來自那裡的學生，他們在此處學習，因為我們的資源未被戰爭摧毀。」

Although most of the institute’s titles are not recognizable to the general

public, they are precious to scholars. They include volumes such as a Greek

first edition of liturgies of John Chrysostom, an early church father,

printed in Rome in 1526.

學院內大多數書籍雖不為大眾所熟知，但對學者來說卻十分珍貴，其中包括1526年在羅馬印刷的早期教會神父約翰．克里索斯托首版的希臘文聖禮儀祈禱文。

“The library is unique in the world,” said Gabriel Radle, a professor at the

University of Notre Dame who studied at the institute.

曾在該學院研究的聖母大學教授拉德爾說：「這個圖書館在世上獨一無二。」

Its volumes cover the broad gamut that is Eastern Christianity, a term for

the traditions and denominations developed in the first centuries of the

church in Jerusalem and the Middle East, spreading through Greece, Turkey

and Eastern Europe, north to Russia, south to Egypt and Ethiopia, and as

far east as India.

它的典籍涵蓋東方基督教的廣大範圍。東方基督教這一專有名詞，是指耶路撒冷及中東教會最初幾世紀發展起來的傳統與教派，傳到希臘、土耳其與東歐，北至俄羅斯，南到埃及跟衣索比亞，往東遠至印度。

The first set of books to be digitized were scanned by an eight-member team

from a Long Island, New York, company, Seery Systems Group, using scanning

technology from SMA of Germany.

第一套數位化的圖書是由紐約長島公司Seery Systems集團一個八人團隊，使用德國SMA公司掃描技術進行掃描。

The digitized books will be managed via ShelterZoom, a New York company.

Chao Cheng-Shorland, CEO of ShelterZoom, said she visited the library this

past year and got very excited about the project.

紐約公司ShelterZoom將管理這些數位化的書籍。ShelterZoom執行長趙鄭肖蘭（譯音）表示，她去年參觀了圖書館並感到非常興奮。

“It’s unique, not just in the technology sense but also in the sense of

contributing to such a wonderful piece of history,” she said.  

她說：「它的獨特之處不僅體現在技術層面，還體現在對這段精彩歷史的貢獻上。」

文／Elisabetta Povoledo 譯／陳韋廷