以下是引用where在2003-4-1 17:22:43的发言:
下面这篇文章是我读到的反战文章中最为雄辩的。
WHERE,
去年你帮忙选购的书已经在郡图书馆上架出借,读者反应良好。
可以说这是为当地华人做了一件善事。既便利了华人读者,也提高了华人的形象。
“巴尔的摩太阳报”还报导了此事。下面是转载来的文章,请阅读。
我代表所有的读者谢谢你为选书付出的时间和努力。
老哈
Donation of Chinese books broadens library offerings
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By Jessica Valdez
Sun Staff
Originally published May 2, 2003
They can speak it. They can understand and listen to it. But many local Chinese children cannot read or write in Chinese.
"There are very few children who can really enjoy Chinese literature," said Qin Wang, who volunteers at the Chinese Language School of Howard County.
With English taught in county schools and Chinese spoken only within the family, area Chinese children easily lose grasp of their parents' language. But now they can go to the Miller branch of the Howard County library to read Chinese literature and strengthen their written skills.
Almost 600 Chinese language materials have been donated to the Howard County Library system by the Chinese Language School and its principal, Qingyuan Han.
The school, which teaches Chinese to area students, hopes the donation will help young Chinese children learn written Chinese and will encourage advanced students to read Chinese literature.
"They donated a lot of Chinese classics and some novels," said Mai-leng Ong, the nonfiction and foreign language selector for Howard County. "There was also a children's collection that was more for learning the language."
Made available to the public several weeks ago, the new books have become popular at the Miller branch, which has the largest population of Asian patrons in the county.
"The materials have literally been flying off the shelf, as do much of the new materials that we have for our Asian community," Miller branch manager Ruth Newton said.
While the books cost the Chinese Language School $3,000, the library estimated that the donation - including volunteer work and the cost of shipping - is worth $25,000.
"[Han] went back to China to purchase the books, and we saved a lot of money," Wang said. "The library considers [the books to be] worth $10,000, because if they buy these books in America it would be that much money."
Volunteers help
Parent volunteer efforts saved the library the $15,000 it would have cost to prepare the books for circulation.
Since the library system cannot accommodate Chinese script, parent volunteers transliterated all titles, authors and other publishing information into pinyin, the Roman alphabet version of Chinese.
A professional would have charged $25 a book for the service.
"The thing that makes this unique is the fact that the parents of the students at the Chinese school transliterated the titles for us, which helps us prepare it for processing," said Christie Lassen, spokeswoman for the library.
"It was the volunteer efforts that made this really a large donation," Lassen said.
Approximately eight to 10 parent volunteers transliterated all 600 titles at Howard Community College in November.
The funds for the donation came from a $3,000 budget surplus at the school.
"The school is a nonprofit organization so the students pay the tuition, but the administrators devote their time without any pay so there's a savings left over," Wang said. "Only the teachers are paid."
Han returned to China last year to select the books.
Library's access
At first, the school wanted to create its own Chinese library with the funds, but Han realized that the school could not give the community daily access to the books.
He added that the public library would make the materials available to a wider audience, including those not Chinese.
"It's a very good effort, not only in terms of the Chinese books," Wang said. "It also lets the American society know more about Chinese culture."
Copyright © 2003, The Baltimore Sun