There is a lot to learn about the creations of Beatrix Potter—not only is she the author and illustrator of one of the world's most famous children's books, The Tale of Peter Rabbit, but also a pioneering conservationist with the spirit of a scientist.

“Potter grew up as the daughter of a wealthy Victorian family, but along with her brother filled an entire floor of their large house in London with all sorts of animals,” said Anne Lundin, a retired professor for the UW-Madison School of Library Studies.

“As an adult, she was a frustrated botanical illustrator and scientist. That field was not open to her because she was female,”Lundin said. Potter was urged to turn the charming illustrations and stories she wrote in letters to children into books. She wrote 23 books in all—a body of work that has inspired plays, ballets, films and an astonishing amount of merchandise.

“The Tale of Peter Rabbit is probably the most famous children's book in the world, which was published 113 years ago and has really stood the test of time. It's been translated into 36 languages. The parents and grandparents will share it with the next generation,”said Lundin.

Potter also made a mark on the world through her land conservation. “In many ways, she was like Peter Rabbit, venturing into a world of adventure and risk. She withdrew from London as soon as she started making some money on her books to the Lake District and became an extremely important farmer and conservationist. She preserved and passed on 15 farms and over 4,000 acres, which were given back to the country as gifts in the 20th century,”said Lundin.

Even though she was born 150 years ago, she was amazingly modern—her embracing of the natural world, commented Jennifer Blatchley Smith, an artistic director of the show Peter Rabbit Tales to celebrate the 150th anniversary of Potter's birth.

The library is one of the most popular places at a western university.Students turn to it for research，conversations about class，and many other services.

Compared with Chinese libraries，college libraries in the US and UK tend to offer more resources.A postgraduate at Yale University can borrow as many as 225 books at a time.

In addition to borrowing books，there are online and electronic resources.These include a database search of popular and academic material，such as LexisNexis Academic，which offers items from newspapers and magazines.

Although books and articles are the items that students ask for most frequently，some libraries provide audio and video recordings，maps and sheet music(活页乐谱)．At some schools，teachers and tutors put electronic copies of their teaching PPTs on the library web to give easier access for students.

Another useful service in western college libraries is the Interlibrary Loan.This allows a student at one school to borrow books from another school.The loan request is made through the studentˈs college library，which gets the book，gives it to the user，and arranges for its return.

Technology has brought more services to students and has made libraries attractive.Some universities have services for students to send messages through the computer or mobile texts to ask the library staff for information.

Earlier this year，Harvard University introduced a new Scan and Deliver service，allowing students to make requests for parts of books and articles.Requests made through the system are handled by library staff.The student receives an e-mail with an Internet link to the scanned pages.The service is free and all material comes within four days.

It used to be that libraries didnˈt allow food or drinks.But that rule is changing and many of them now contain a café so students can spend as much time as they want in the library.

Actually，some US university libraries are now all-night affairs，or have at least one study room open all night.

Jane Addams（1860﹣1935）

Anyone who has ever been helped by a social worker has Jane Addams to thank．Addams helped the poor and worked for peace．She encouraged a sense of community（社区）by creating shelters and promoting education and services for people in need In 1931，Addams became the first American woman to win the Nobel Peace Prize．

Rachel Carson（1907﹣1964）

If it weren’t for Rachel Carson，the environmental movement might not exist today．Her popular 1962 book Silent Spring raised awareness of the dangers of pollution and the harmful effects of chemicals on humans and on the world’s  lakes and oceans．

Sandra Day O’Connor（1930﹣present）

When Sandra Day O’Connor finished third in her class at Stanford Law School，in 1952，she could not find work at a law firm because she was a woman．She became an Arizona state senator（参议员） and，in 1981，the first woman to join the  U．S．Supreme Court．O’Connor gave the deciding vote in many important cases during her 24 years on the top court．

Rosa Parks（1913﹣2005）

On December 1，1955，in Montgomery，Alabama，Rasa Parks would not give up her seat on a bus to a white passenger．Her simple act landed Parks in prison．But it also set off the Montgmery bus boycott．It lasted for more than a year，and kicked off the civil﹣rights movement．“The only tired I was，was tired of giving in，”said Parks．

When I was twenty-seven years old, I was a mining-broker’s clerk in San Francisco, and an expert in all the details of stock traffic, I was alone in the world, and had nothing to depend upon but my wits and a clean reputation; but these were setting my feet in the road to eventual fortune, and I was content with the prospect. My time was my own after the afternoon board, Saturdays, and I was accustomed to putting it in on a little sail-boat on the bay. One day I ventured too far, and was carried out to sea. Just at nightfall, when hope was about gone, I was picked up by a small ship which was bound for London. It was a long and stormy voyage, and they made me work my passage without pay, as a common sailor. When I stepped ashore in London my clothes were ragged and shabby, and I had only a dollar in my pocket. This money fed and sheltered me twenty-four hours. During the next twenty-four I went without food and shelter.

About ten o’clock on the following morning, dirty and hungry, I was dragging myself along Portland Place, when a child that was passing, towed by a nurse-maid, tossed a big pear——minus one bite——into the gutter. I stopped, of course, and fastened my desiring eye on that muddy treasure. My mouth watered for it, my stomach craved it, my whole being begged for it. But every time I made a move to get it some passing eye detected my purpose, and of course I straightened up then, and looked indifferent and pretended that I hadn’t been thinking about the pear at all. This same thing kept happening and happening, and I couldn’t get the pear.

I was just getting desperate enough to brave all the shame, and to seize it, when a window behind me was raised, and a gentleman spoke out of it, saying: “ Step in here, please.”

I was admitted by a man servant, and shown into a sumptuous room where a couple of elderly gentlemen were sitting. They sent away the servant, and made me sit down. They had just finished their breakfast, and the sight of the remains of it almost overpowered me. I could hardly keep my wits together in the presence of that food, but as I was not asked to sample it, I had to bear my trouble as best as I could.

Now, something had been happening there a little before, which I did not know anything about until a good many days afterwards, but I will tell you about it now. Those two old brothers had been having a pretty hot argument a couple of days before, and had ended by agreeing to decide it by a bet, which is the English way of settling everything.

You will remember that the Bank of England once issued two notes of a million pounds each, to be used for a special purpose connected with some public transaction with a foreign country. For some reason or other only one of these had been used and canceled; the other still lay in the vaults of the Bank. Well, the brothers, chatting along, happened to get to wondering what might be the fate of a perfectly honest and intelligent stranger who should be turned adrift in London without a friend, and with no money but that million-pound bank-note, and no way to account for his being in possession of it. Brother A said he would starve to death; Brother B said he wouldn’t. Brother A said he couldn’t offer it at a bank or anywhere else, because he would be arrested on the spot. So they went on disputing till Brother B said he would bet twenty thousand pounds that the man would live thirty days, anyway, on that million, and keep out of jail, too. Brother A took him up. Brother B went down to the Bank and bought that note. Then he dictated a letter, which one of his clerks wrote out in a beautiful round hand, and then the two brothers sat at the window a whole day watching for the right man to give it to.

I finally became the pick of it.

The film classic The Last Picture Show was the last movie shown in the old theater. Though the movie is 30 years old, most of the 250 seats were filled with teary-eyed audience wanting to say good-bye to the old building. Theater owner Ed Bradford said he chose the movie because it seemed appropriate. The movie is set in a small town where the only movie theater is preparing to close down.

For years I have been asked by several people how and why I came to translate a novel by Virginia Woolf in 1945. I graduated from the University of Ankara in 1941 and my four teachers, including Orphan Burian, are members of the Translation Bureau who prepared a list of works to be translated into Turkish and set themselves to translating some of these, besides shouldering the heavy work of correcting or editing the translations submitted to the Bureau. Orphan Burian, now mostly known for his translations of Shakespeare, had started to translate To the Lighthouse for the Translation Bureau, but at the same time he wanted to do something from Shakespeare. So he transferred it to me.

For me, To the Lighthouse was love at first sight or rather at first reading. To translate a book, I first read it from the beginning to the end. Then I started writing each sentence by hand. When I finished the whole book I read my translation from the beginning to the end, checking it with the original, and making corrections. Then I typed it, and read the typed copy, making changes again. All in all that added up to five readings. I started translating the novel in 1943 and submitted it to the Bureau in 1944. It was published in 1945 under the general title of “New English Literature” in the series called “Translations from World Literature” known as the “Classical Series”.

So, the first book by Virginia Woolf in Turkish appeared in 1945, and it was To the Lighthouse. This was eighteen years after its publication in England in 1927. To me the book itself was pure poetry; I read it as if in a dream. Not trying to dive very deeply into it, I sort of swam on it or over it. Now, years later, I swim in it. Even after so many years, in each reading I become conscious of new layers of which I haven’t been aware before. It keeps pace with my experiences in life as years go by, and each reading is a new reading for me.

In 1982 and again in 1989 I revised it for two new editions and I again did it sentence by sentence checking it with the original. In those years I had thought it was necessary to revise my translations every ten years, but now I think I must do it every three or four years. In a country like Turkey, where we work very hard to clear our language from old and new foreign words, we should try to be up to date as to the words we are using, and of the same importance are the studies being made on the methods or techniques of translation, and new approaches in translation.

While translating, I usually have both the writer and the reader in mind. The novels she wrote after 1920 were especially new for most of the readers. She usually uses very short sentences, followed by rather long ones. I remember sentences of more than ten lines which weren’t easy for me to translate as they were. And in Turkish our having only one word, the word “O”, for “he”, “she”, “it” in English, made me repeat the names of the characters more often than Woolf did. And I changed some long indirect sentences in the original into direct sentences in my translation, thinking it would make an easier reading in Turkish.

When translating, I make use of all kinds of dictionaries. A difficult English word for me is the word “vision”. In To the Lighthouse, the artist Lily Briscoe is trying to finish the picture she has been drawing for some time and the novel ends with the following sentences: “Yes, she thought, laying down her brush extremely tired, I’ve had my vision.” And I’m still thinking about how to translate this remark into Turkish.

The market，which was founded in 1979，sets up its tents every Saturday from 7 a．m. to 1 p．m.，rain or shine，along North Lemon and State streets.Baskets of perfect red strawberries；the red-painted sides of the Java Dawg coffee truck；and most of all，the tomatoes：amazing，large，soft and round red tomatoes.

Disappointed by many a broken，vine-ripened(蔓上成熟的) promise，I’ve refused to buy winter tomatoes for years.No matter how attractive they look in the store，once I get them home they’re unfailingly dry，hard，and tasteless.But I homed in，with uncertainty，on one particular table at the Brown’s Grove Farm’s stand，full of fresh and soft tomatoes the size of my fist.These were the real deal—and at that moment，I realized that the best part of Sarasota in winter was going to be eating things that back home in New York I wouldn’t be experiencing again for months.

Delighted as I was by the tomatoes in sight，my happiness deepened when I learned that Brown’s Grove Farm is one of the suppliers for Jack Dusty，a newly opened restaurant at the Sarasota Ritz Carlton，where—luckily for me—I was planning to have dinner that very night.Without even seeing the menu，I knew I’d be ordering every tomato on it.

   I think it was October, 1982. A friend had business dealings in the city of Reno, Nevada, and I was asked to accompany her on an overnight trip. While she conducted her business, I was aimlessly wandering down Virginia Street, heading into a most gloriously beautiful sunset. I had an urge to speak to someone on the street to share that beauty, but I couldn't make eye contact with anyone. Quickly I ducked into a department store and asked the lady behind the counter if she could come outside for just a minute. She looked at me as though I were from some other planet and said, "Well..." Surprisingly, she followed me out.

   When she got outside I said to her, "Just look at that sunset! Nobody out here was looking at it and I just had to share it with someone."

   For a few seconds we just looked. Then I said, "God's in his heaven and all's right with the world." I thanked her for coming out to see it and sharing the beauty.

   Four years later my situation had changed considerably. I had come to the end of a twenty-year marriage, I was alone and on my own for the first time in my life. One day, while my clothes were going around, I picked up a Unity Magazine and read an article about a woman who had been in similar circumstances. She had come to the end of a marriage, moved to a strange community, and the only job she could find was one she disliked: cosmetic sales in a department store. We had a lot in common.

   Then something happened to her that changed everything. She said a woman came into her department store and asked her to step outside to look at a sunset. The stranger had said, "God's in his heaven and all's right with the world.", and she had realized the truth in that statement and that she simply had not been seeing it. From that moment on, she turned her life around.

These are some ideas that some people came up with about what the life will be like in the year 2500.

We will have established a base on the moon. School kids can take field trips to the moon weekly. We will have found cures (疗法) for AIDS and cancer. The war will have ended and peace flows freely through the land. Kids will learn more and be smarter than ever before！History will be the main subject at school. Cafeteria (自助餐厅) food will be delicious！You just walk up to a machine, stick out your tongue, and it will scan your taste buds (味蕾) to see what you want to eat.

—Kristen

Here I am in the wonderful year of 2500 and life is so easy. I work in a pet store and it is so hard！I have to wake up at midnight every day and fly my car to the store. It takes so long to get there. It takes me 20 seconds to get to the store in Mississippi from my home in Florida！At work, I have to push 5 buttons and then I go home. It takes 2 seconds and that is like forever.

—Morgan

In the year 2500, I think we will have invented cars that run on things we donˈt need like garbage. Tail gas will smell like whatever you like such as chocolate. I also predict that buildings will be able to go into a different dimension (维) so your car wonˈt hit them. The cars in 2500 donˈt fly, for we havenˈt got that technology yet, but they can hover (盘旋) up to seven feet. These cars are made for speed!

—Carly

Instead of cars, we may have hovering devices that float around. We could also have electric cars instead of gas­powered cars. Food might be more healthy. What I believe is that the environment will change the most. The environmental changes will also determine many other changes. If more people try to help the environment, then perhaps in 2500 we will have more forests and wildlife. If people wonˈt help the environment, then we will have no forests and little wildlife left.

—Roberta