Livemocha.com vs Busuu.com for Free Language Learning and Other Resources

Founded in 1991, the heavyweight language learning software worldwide is Rosetta Stone. In 2010 Rosetta Stone made approximately $220 million in profit. Rosetta Stone is currently incorporating live tutors into their overpriced software. My question is, why is anybody spending money when Livemocha.com and Busuu.com are great free language learning communities?

The following graph shows the similarities and differences between Livemocha.com and Busuu.com.

With all of the great value you get from Busuu and Livemocha, you might be wondering “what is the catch?” The beautiful answer is that there is no catch! Busuu was a UNESCO partner during the “Year of Languages”, and it was started in Madrid, Spain. Livemocha is the world’s largest language learning website, and the popularity soared after was mentioned in the New York Times, period.

But, what if you really want to get a tutor in your designated language and you live in the United States? You can always post a “gig” on craigslist.org. Say, for example, you wanted to learn Spanish. You could put up an ad in the city in which you live and get a native speaker, pretty much wherever you are. The same works for most languages in most metropolitan areas. I., myself, learned Spanish via telephone this way with a very nice and professional woman from Honduras.

In the age of Skype, you can reach out across the globe for a tutor, and while Craigslist is king in the United States, it is not popular in other countries. I have included the popular free classified ads boards below for those who wish to reach out across the world.

For the Spanish speaking world mundoanuncio.com is king.
In France vivastreet.com is popular.
If you wanted to learn English from an American Craigslist.org is a great choice.
If you wanted to learn English from an Englishman thesun.co.uk is a great free place to post
if you want to learn German kleinanzeigen.ebay.de ist sher gut!
if you want to use the mainland Chinese version of craigslist it is 58.com

Or, maybe you want to learn Russian, so you can post on avito.ru

Between Google translate and the help of a friend, learning a language has never been easier or cheaper! Most countries accept PayPal as a payment option, and those that do not allow PayPal generally do allow Western Union. if you want to learn how to speak Spanish like a native of Barcelona, go ahead!

Onelook.com should be mentioned as the world’s best dictionary for the English-language as chosen by me because it is a dictionary meta-search engine that indexes hundreds of specialized dictionaries and general dictionaries that can be searched from one easy to use interface.

Wordreference.com is the best multilingual social media dictionary because there are forums where current word usage is discussed in addition to giving you the definitions. Very useful!

Last but not least, when talking about defining words, there is the Google chrome extension Google Dictionary that makes looking up words you are unfamiliar in most major languages a snap and a heckuva lot easier.

Now we know the definitions of all of our words. But how do we conjugate the verbs? Easy verbix.com ‘s free web-based conjugators for every language I’m familiar with. Don’t buy those books that teach you how to conjugate verb. Save a tree and some more green!

With this short overview of free and no cost resources, there is no use for you not to start learning a language today!

if you would like help researching a topic, contact me at kd3qc@yahoo.com

Loan e-books on Amazon.com By William Jiang, MLS

Great news! Amazon.com announced last year that the Kindle will allow purchasers of electronic books to lend their e-books to others. This technology opens up worlds of possibilities that libraries offer eBooks to their customers with the readers of e-books. If libraries play their cards right they will be able to increase readership, increase circulation, increase visits to the libraries of all customers in a giant step by rapidly adopting this new technology. Exciting indeed!

Read more here:
http://forums.digitaltextplatform.com/dtpforums/entry.jspa?externalID=581

Southern California Libraries Avoided serious damage caused by torrential rains, by William Jiang, MLS

Rains that hit southern California during the week of Christmas 2010, later left a foot of snow in New York City, have done little damage to libraries in the South California. There are reports of tens of thousands of dollars in damage in Southern California, floods and landslides, however, when I spoke with a representative of the Library Cooperative of Southern California, she told me that she had not heard of a single library that was closed by the storm. This is great news for the Latino community of Southern California. According to the 2010 census Hispanics are the largest ethnic group in southern California Latinos are nearly 41% of the population followed by a little less than 40% of Caucasians and 10% from Asia and around 7 % African American. The fact that the Latino community depends on the libraries of Southern California is evident in studies of use among Latino communities in the United States. Happy New Year! This is good news in late 2010.

Latinos and public library use in New York by William Jiang, MLS

According to the 2000 census 27% of New York City are Hispanic or Latino. When you realize that there are about 8.2 million people in New York, according to the 2006 estimate, this means that more than 2.2 million people in New York Hispanic or Latino. The census of 2010 will be more accurate.

Latinos use the library as much as whites do. The only group that uses more than Latinos and Caucasians is the Asian group, which uses the library 10% more about than any other group. Library use among Latinos is about 54%, services are the main reason for people of Latino descent for library use. The privacy concerns in this community is serious. (Http: / / www.libraryjournal.com/lj/community/publicservices/861938-276/study_of_latinos_and_libraries.html.csp)

Due to economic recession, the use of the collection in all groups is rising, as they depend on them to search for jobs, entertainment and educational programs, among other things. This shows that there is a correlation between unemployment and the use of the library collections by the unemployed. Latinos have been left, economically, the poorest group in New York by the current downturn.

The ethnic composition of New York City, Latinos are as
follows:
Mexican: 282 965
Puerto Rican: 784,065
Cuban: 42,209
Other Hispanic or Latino, including Dominican 1,178,666


According to the September 28, 2010 The New York Times in 2009 about 100,000 people were pushed into poverty in New York City alone. The highest unemployment ne New York according to the article is in the Bronx community where Latinos are 36% unemployed. The Bronx became the larger community of Latinos in the city with more than 650,000 Latinos, so this is a big problem for the Latino community. It is expected that due to this the use of the library of the Bronx is up. There have been no more current measurements using the published statistics of the public library, so all we can do is guess and know New York's libraries are very important to Spanish-speaking community ..

Homeless Clients and Libraries of New York, by William Jiang, MLS

Statistics are largely unknown, however, families are 78% of the homeless population in the city of New York (http://www.ysop . org / statistics.htm) Neither widely known to the public is that homeless people generally are loyal customers of NYPL. Often, due to the negative association in the mind of the public, most homeless people feel stigma when they use the libraries.

Ideally, libraries should be a haven for anyone who wants to read, a world away from the chaotic environment of the city. For the homeless who are not in shelters, NYPL can mean a safe haven from the city's shelters, many of which are dangerous.

In fact, the presence of homeless people in the libraries can sometimes create a problem. According http://www.crowbold.com/homepage/homeless.htm, "... there is actual conflict between the rights of the homeless and the rights of other users and library workers. Homeless can sleep with a snoring loudly enough to disturb the contemplation of other customers. For hygiene reasons, customers may feel uncomfortable handling of materials that the homeless have been handling. As a result Many librarians classify homeless people as "problem customers". "

Blacks and Latinos are disproportionately homeless in NYC, "Approximately 90% of homeless Yorkers are black or Latino, but only 53% percent of the population of the city are black or Latino." (Http://www.ysop.org / statistics.htm)

There is a disproportionate number of homeless Latinos compared with the general population of Latinos in New York. For this reason, the de facto use of libraries as temporary shelters should receive more attention from Latino leaders. There are a lot of inertia to help this marginalized population due to the common thought that this population is crazy, "... in the late 1970’s and early 1980's deinstitutionalization of the mentally ill, along with a reduction in public housing, resulted in an increase in the population of homeless people .. "(http://www.crowbold.com/homepage/homeless.htm) Also, there is a single population increase of alcoholics and other drug abuse among the homeless as opposed to homeless families. (Http://www.coalitionforthehomeless.org/pages/basic-facts) Few want to deal directly with this population problem.

Homeless people in the Latino population, whether in a family who is homeless or a single person with no home care in New York need smarter and better government. I think first, we must create safe havens for homeless families who are not struggling with mental health or drug abuse. Then the rest should be divided into three groups: the mentally ill, substance abusers, and the group is called MICA, which is composed of drug users with mental illness because these three groups have different needs. All homeless people who are taken care of decrease the desire to increase the number of people in prisons in New York City. It is not only humane thing to do, is economic to do, and think about the children! Approximately 50% of homeless are children! (Http://www.wsws.org/articles/2004/jan2004/nyc-j07.shtml)

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.