Learn languages ​​free? by William Jiang, MLS

The world knows certain courses such as the Rosetta Stone and the English sin Barreras. These courses are excellent, however, they are quite expensive and not affordable given that costs can be prohibitive.

Livemocha.com is the first resource that I would point to learn other languages. This site has free classes in various languages ​​for people around the world. The portal is located at www.livemocha.com . One of the most useful features of this program is the chat feature where you can learn the languages ​​through writing chat or voice chat with someone who speaks the native language. Incredible!

To learn to conjugate verb is very important when learning many languages. The link http://www.verbix.com/languages ​​can conjugate verbs in 60 languages ​​on a platform that is easy to use and is free.

Wordreference.com multilingual dictionary is a wonderful, because not only is free and easy to use, but also includes forums where people can ask questions to a global online community to clarify specific and accurate words in all languages ​​with people from all over the world. This is a great resource for translators.

Another good dictionary is Onelook.com which is the largest English language dictionary. Onelook is known as a search engine "goal" of dictionaries. It's basically a search engine only dictionaries and a fantastic resource for translators of English. Also, scientists, engineers, and any others who are involved in the academic world with great influence of English can use. There are currently 1062 general and specialized dictionaries.

The Google language tools can be useful for quick translations. The Google language tools can be found off of the home page under "Language Tools" and they are very useful for translating between various languages. Also visit the Toolkit "Google Translator Toolkit." Finally, the defined plugins for browsers like Internet Explorer, Safari, Firefox and Chrome can help you with instant translation of words.

E-LIS, By William Jiang MLS

Beginning September 14, 2010, E-LIS has the largest collection of documents written information science on the Web and are freely available. In Spanish there are about 3,960 items, while in all the languages ​​together a total of 1100. This means that more than one in three articles in the archive E-LIS are in Spanish. In English there are only 3,388 items. To put this in terms relevant: Spanish is the language most represented in this database.

The description on its "About E-LIS is as follows:" E-LIS is a free repository created in 2003 for the depository of documents within the subjects of Library and Information Science and related topics. It is the first international e-server dedicated to this subject area, and its objective is to promote the Open Access philosophy through a core business: providing access to texts and Science Library Information. For this, the volunteers work with a large number of individuals from different countries and with different academic backgrounds. It is therefore an initiative which is non-profit and in line with the FOS movement ( Free Online Scholarship) and E-Prints, the latter based on standards and protocols of the OAI (Open Access Initiative). E-LIS is the result of the project DoIS RCLIS and promoted by the Spanish Ministry of Culture and maintained on servers CILEA (Interuniversity Conzorcio Lombardo per Ellaborazione Automatica) Italian.

Although the e-LIS project was a joint effort between the Ministry of Cultures of Spain and Italy, the literature of library science in science of Spanish libraries is the dominant content of the database.

Google Chrome, Google Instant, and Google Caffeine: Where We Are, by William Jiang, MLS

In November 2009, the new algorithm called "Caffeine" began to be the power behind the Google search engine. Caffeine renews, improves and accelerates results displayed on Google. "The first step in the process allow us to increase the size, indexing speed, accuracy, completeness and other dimensions," explained Sitaram Iyer, software engineer, and Matt Cutts, Google's chief engineer, in the official blog.

There seems to be a new tool released by Google almost every day. Google Instant makes the search faster and interactive displays search results instantly displayed during the search. Google has put its database on AJAX technology! AJAX is a great technology that Google has used in the past with Gmail, Google Docs, Google Maps, and more.

AJAX stands for "Asynchronous Javascript And XML", and it is a new technique that allows the browser "Google Chrome" to step forward and makes things more interesting since Google Chrome has the fastest JavaScript engine of all browsers including Firefox, Internet Explorer, and Safari. Mm?. The best search engine and the best browser engine together? Another Google technology is dead! Long live Google!

Libraries of Sierra Leone, by William Jiang, MLS

My interest in Sierra Leone began with the DiCaprio movie "Blood Diamonds." In this film there was a world full of bloody conflicts and short life revolved around the diamond trade. That's why the movie is called "Blood Diamonds" because of blood being shed to collect the gems.

Sierra Leone is a small West African country bordered by Guinea, Liberia, and the Pacific Ocean. The country has 5 million people with a GDP of just over $ 4 billion with an average per capita income of about $ 900 per year. In Sierra Leone there are very rich and very poor. About half of the population is involved in agriculture, and about half of export revenues generated by diamonds. Sierra Leone is a young democracy. The median age of the population is 19 years of age. A median age so young is an indication that life is hard there. 10,000 children fought in the year of the civil war in Sierra Leone. And now, another 500,000 are in the paramilitary groups.(Http://www.un.org/works/goingon/soldiers/goingon_soldiers.html)

Amid all this death and destruction in this small country, I wondered if there would be some libraries to serve this nation devastated by war. According tohttp://www.sabre.org,

there is a main library in the city of Freetown and two of the nine branch libraries survived the war. The country also has a repository of the United Nations Library at the University of Sierra Leone. This leaves the main library sources of war-scarred country and university libraries, the University of Sierra Leone and Njala University, with a combined number of 500,000 books and no web presence.

As of September 2010, the University Sierra Leone does not have online page dedicated to their library or library catalog and there are very terse instructions on a website of the institution: http://www.tusol.org/.

Njala University has a website http://www.njalauniversity.net

and a page for their library that says "Coming Soon". There is no other information. Much of this information is by John Abdul Kargbo, Senior Lecturer at the Institute of Library, Information and Communication Studies at Fourah Bay College, University of Sierra Leone.

Getting a good book to read is generally not a priority of a population facing major problems of life and possible early death in their daily lives. However, for the long-term health of Sierra Leone’s democracy it would be great if they could increase their collections in order to serve its people.

AMD Bulldozer versus Intel Sandy Bridge versus NVIDIA CUDA

AMD Bulldozer versus Intel Sandy Bridge versus NVIDIA CUDA
By William Jiang, MLS

The new battleground for microprocessors is now the realm of graphics, and there are three major combatants: AMD, NVIDIA, and Intel. Intel produced the Sandy Bridge series of processors which integrate the Computer Processing Unit (CPU) and Graphical Processing Units (GPUs). This integration of CPU and GPU seems to be a trend for the future. AMD’s flavor of this hybrid CPU and GPU is called an APU or Accelerated Processing Unit. AMD’s new processor architecture named Bulldozer has come out with their first chip aimed at the mobile segment: Llano.

The “system on a chip” was not always in existence. Since the Intel 8066 chip came out in 1978 video cards handled video, and the CPU was divided into the CU (Control Unit) and ALU (Arithmetic Logic Unit) and never did the two meet. NVIDIA emerged as the video card power more than a decade ago, and relatively recently NVIDIA started the CUDA technologies which gamers and people involved in multimedia use for drastic improvements in performance. As of yet, a strong CPU with a strong NVIDIA video card combination’s performance can not be touched by an integrated CPU/GPU as of yet, so NVIDIA has some breathing room. However, as the CPU/GPU integration becomes tighter, NVIDIA may need to find a strategic partner in AMD or Intel.

Multiculturalism: One Librarian's Personal Testimonial, By William Jiang MLS

I remember the first time I experienced the cultural phenomenon called multiculturalism outside of my own home. I was reading the Stony Brook University newspaper called “The Brook”. The year was either 1991 or 1992. The term multiculturalism that was used in the newspaper was new to me as well as new to the community in which I was living: Long Island, NY. However, as far back as I can remember I have lived in a multicultural house thanks to my mother. Four times a year mom had a "family food feast" where we would have one food from each of our ancestors culinary repertoires. We had delicious cheeses from France and Normandy, noodles from China, shortbread from Scotland, fish and chips from England, and much more! I still look forward to these family food feasts because not only is it a celebration of everything that I am, it is a celebration of cultures, societies, and peoples that are now dead but are not forgotten because their stories live on in books, and in our hearts.

At one point I was trying to pick up a Swedish girl at the Scandinavia House in New York City. There was a tree in the middle of the room, with no apparent point or purpose to it. It looked nice, however it puzzled me. Why was it there? The second time the Scandinavian girl came back to my table as waitress, I asked her about it. Then, suddenly, I remembered the world tree Yggdrasil upon which Odin, the most powerful god of the Norse mythos, had a vision of the runes, and thus written language was born in Scandinavia. I asked her if this tree could be Yggdrasil. she replied, “What? I don’t know anything about Norse mythology. We don’t study that in Sweden anymore.” So, I told her the story of how Odin had the vision of the runes, and she was happy to learn about it. For me, this is the best kind of multiculturalism: positive, life-affirming, and based on history and tales of long ago.

However, multiculturalism is now on the decline on the world stage. From a nascent field embraced in academia about two decades ago. Angela Merkel, the German Chancellor has called multiculturalism in Germany a failure. Sarkozy, the Prime Minister of France has said that the Burka is no longer welcome in France. It is sad to me to see this experiment that is multiculturalism in the modern world to be threatened. I believe that the old concept of America as a melting pot still is important. However, there are people in our country that are not of Anglo-American stock. Latinos and African-Americans as well as other groups deserve recognition by the libraries that serve them as well as the institutions which make up our country. I feel that we must not give up on the concept of multiculturalism as librarians because not one among us is as rich as all of us.

Southern California libraries spared damages from torrential rains of Christmas 2010 By William Jiang, MLS

The rains that hit Southern California in the week of Christmas 2010 and traveled across the country to dump over a foot of snow on New York City have done little damage to the libraries of Southern California. There are reports of tens of thousands of dollars of damage across Southern California, widespread flooding, and mudslides, however when I talked to a representative from the Southern California Library Cooperative she said that she had not heard of a single library that was closed by the storm. This is great news for the Latino community of South California. According to the 2010 census Latinos are the largest ethnic group in Southern California at almost 41% of the population followed by slightly under 40% of Caucasian and about 10% Asian-American and about 7% African-American. the fact that the Latino community depends upon the libraries of Southern California is evident in studies of usage among the Latino communities across the United States. Happy new year! This is some good news to end 2010.