1 . Nearly two decades ago when the Google Books Project digitized and freely distributed more than 25 million works, book publishers argued that free digital distribution weakens the market for physical books. However, new research from Imke Reimers and Abhishek Nagaraj reveals that the opposite — increased demand for physical books, through online discovery — could be true.

The two researchers focused on a particular part of Google Books’ digitized works: those from Harvard University’s Widener Library, which helped seed the project in its early days. The condition that enabled their experiment: Harvard’s digitization effort only included out-of-copyright works, published before 1923 , which were made available to consumers in their entirety. The works from 1923 and later were still copyrighted and not digitized.

The researchers analyzed a total of 37,743 books scanned (扫描) between 2005 and2009. They looked at sales for the two years before this digitization period and the two years after , and found clear differences in the increased sales between digitized and non-digitized books. Approximately 40% of digitized titles saw a sales increase from 2003-2004 to 2010-2011, compared to less than 20% of titles that were not digitized. The increase in sales was also found to be stronger for less popular books.

“If a book is readily available online, people may decide that it’s a useful book and want to buy it,” Reimers said. “The ‘discovery effect’, which even increased the sales of a digitized author’s non-digitized works, is a strong driver of increased sales. It’s not a huge jump in sales , but it’s still good news for publishers.”

“And book lovers,” Reimers said, “are known for their preference for physical books, as opposed to digital versions, which could also play a role.” She added ,“Whenever I talk to people about my research on books, at some point they all say,’ I just love the feel of a digitized author’s non-digitized works, is a strong driver of increased sales. It’s not a huge jump in sales , but it’s still good news for publishers.”

“And book lovers,” Reimers said, “are known for their preference for physical books , as opposed to digital versions, which could also play a role.” She added, “Whenever I talk to people about my research on books, at some point they all say, ‘I just love the feel of a book in my hand.’”

The Power of Reading

Good morning, ladies and gentlemen!

There is distinction between reading for information and reading for understanding. Thus we can     1     the word “reading” in two distinct senses.

The first sense is the one in which we read newspapers, magazines, or anything else. We can get     2     to the content of those materials easily. Such materials may increase our store of information, but they cannot improve our understanding. And clearly we don’t have any difficulty in gaining the new information, for our understanding was     3     to them before we started. Otherwise, we would have felt the shock of puzzlement.

The second sense is the one in which we read something that at first we do not completely understand. Here the thing to be read is at the first sight better or higher than the reader. The writer is communicating something that can     4     the reader’s understanding. Such communication between unequals must be possible. Otherwise one person could never learn from another. Here “learning” means understanding more, not remembering more information.

What are the     5     in this kind of reading? First, there is inequality in understanding. The writer must be “    6    ” to the reader in understanding. Besides, his book must     7     something he possesses and his potential readers lack. Second, the reader must be able to overcome this inequality in some degree. And he should always try to     8     the same level of understanding with the writer. If the equality is     9    , success of communication is achieved.

Besides gaining information and understanding, there’s another goal of reading -- entertainment. It is the least     10     and requires the least amount of effort. Everyone who knows how to read can read for entertainment if he wants to. In fact, any book that can be read for understanding or information can probably be read for entertainment as well.

10 . The red phone box in Britain is a perfect example of the British traditional culture. However, with the fast development of mobile phones, it has lost its place in people’s everyday life. In order to save their loved red phone boxes, people have thought up many ideas, for example, to turn them into toilets or art houses.

In a village in Somerset, a place in South West England, villagers have found a novel way to save their red phone box. They turned it into a mini library to deal with the shortage of libraries in their area. The idea was given by a local villager, Janet Fisher, who lives opposite the phone box. Villagers rallied together to set up the book box. Over 100 books and a variety of movies and music CDs are available at this tiny library. The books are of different kinds, ranging from cooking books to the classics and children’s books.

People can put the books that they have read inside the phone box, and take away the books that they’d like to read. The books are always changing. There is a regular check on the books to keep the phone box collection fresh.

Anyone is free to come to read books there. The phone box library is open every day around the clock and is lit at night. “It’s very pleasing that the red phone box has been saved. More importantly, it can continue providing a service for us,” said one of the villagers.