WISER: Modern Languages
Lucile Deslignères
Librarian, Language Centre
librarian@lang.ox.ac.uk
“The 3 Cs: commitment,
continuity and communication”
Commitment requires dedication and focus
Continuity incremental process over time
Communication use and employ the language
meaningfully and in real contexts, so you can see
the immediate usefulness of it.
From Dante Cerulo, Italian Tutor at the Language
Centre
Aims
• Find valuable resources for learning
modern languages
• Use resources offered by Oxford and from
other referential sites
• Make use of the language you are learning
in your searches
• Find tools for non-latin writing systems
• Search non-English search engines
SOLO
• Searching: Simple and Advanced search
• Browsing: put language in subject box +
Language Centre Library/library of choice
Video guide to searching at
http://languagelibraryatoxford.blogspot.com
OXLIP+
For advanced levels. Which database?
• Browse by subject
• Search if you know the name, cross-search
(as a starter)
Use the "i" button for information about
database coverage
For Dictionaries Oxford Reference Online or
CREDO
OXLIP+ News
• NexisUK for Danish, Dutch, French,
German, Italian, Spanish. Search by
keyword in the language
• Factiva browse the news from Bulgarian
to Turkish, some audio facilities
• News in Chinese? Japanese? Russian?
Browse by subject in OxLIP+ and get help
from Subject Consultants
e-books
Project Gutenberg has audio books in Chinese,
Dutch, Finnish, French, German, Russian, Spanish
and many many more !
Google books beware of language limits facilities,
best is to go to the Google of the language you are
studying
The online Books Page mostly English but quality
links for Foreign Languages in the Archives
E-books (as objects)
Non-Latin writing systems
• Chinese, Japanese, Russian: how do I
type ? How do I learn how to type?
Options on PC/MAC computers for installing
cyrillic, Chinese, Greek, Japanese
Options on web: James Naughton’s pages
• Others such as Arabic, Mongolian: some
options on computers and web
Searching the web
Blind Search compares between Google, Yahoo
and Bing
Google but which one? Be cautious with the
Language Search facilities. Best is to go to
Google.fr for French searches, Google.ru for
Russian searches etc…
Advanced searches: exact title search, search
within a site, use the language script (paste or
type)
Phil Bradley’s list of search engines by countries
Browsing the web
GATEWAYS: BUBL
SITES:
As starters Omniglot and Wikipedia
For learning at beginner’s level BBC
for less commonly taught languages UCLA
Browsing/searching Delicious pages
Language Centres
• AULC Cambridge Language Centre, King’s
College London, SOAS… and many
others…
• Oxford University Language Centre
Language links: individual, multilingual,
Library blog, Language Exchange
Programmes, WebLearn (Chinese,
French, German pages)
Start-up page & blogs
• Start-up page: audio and video material
http://www.netvibes.com/languagelibrary
http://www.google.com/ig
• Blogs (great for learning how to type)
Top 100 language blogs from Lexiophiles
Other ways…
• MIT open course: Chinese, German, Japanese,
French, Spanish
• Mobile phone “aps”
• Facebook
• Online radio
• Skype
• Twitter
• Youtube
Where to go from here?
Other WISER sessions
• SOLO, OxLIP+, Key News Resources
• Finding quality information on the internet
• Session organised by your Language Subject
Consultant: Arabic, French, Russian etc…
• Getting information to come to you
• Forthcoming: Sources for Medievalists
• Next year: Learning a Language
Reference
Bradley, Phil, Internet Q&A in Library & Information Update,
p.22, Sept 09 for http://blindsearch.fejus.com
http://socialouls.wetpaint.com for everything related to web
2.0 technologies (flickr, facebook, netvibes, twitter, wiki
etc…)
WISER presentation archives
http://www.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/services/training/wiser
Thank you to Hitomi Hall and Minh Chung, for their advice
on writing tools for, respectively, Japanese and Chinese.
©Oxford University Language Centre and Oxford University Library Services