Languages and Creoles in the Educational Resources Information Center (ERIC) Collection

This compilation lists one hundred and thirty-six languages and creoles, full-text instructional materials for which links can be found in the Educational Resources Information Center (ERIC) subscription database which is available at the Library of Congress and other research libraries. The material can also be found in the ERIC microfiche collection at the Library of Congress and via the Internet at http://www.eric.ed.gov. Most of the books listed have never appeared in Books in Print, in any other standard listing of titles, or in the Library of Congress' online catalog. They can be found in no other way other than through the present compilation.

These are languages or regional varieties of languages not commonly studied in the United States, and for many of which satisfactory learning materials have been difficult to find. The compilation does not include English as a foreign or a second language, French, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, Classical Latin, Classical Greek, or any artificial language.

Several points should be noted:

• The list was compiled from the Government Printing Office's printed Monthly Catalog for 1944-1984. The list does not facilitate attempts to search for instructional materials in a given foreign language.
  
  
• A perusal of the page counts of entries herein will show that this collection offers several million pages of unique materials, e.g. varieties of Arabic, Chinese, American Indian and African languages, Asian languages and creoles.
  
  
• The works listed are full-text books which can be viewed online at the Library of Congress and downloaded and/or printed for free. They can also be viewed on microfiche in the Microform Reading Room and photocopied for a fee. For many of them sound recordings were also produced. Researchers interested in languages not represented here may search the ERIC database or the GPO Monthly Catalog for bibliographic information on works mentioned there but not reproduced in full in the microfiche collection.
  
  
• Courses published by the Department of State's Foreign Service Institute are in the public domain and are being put online, both text and sound, free for use on the Internet at http://www.fsi-language-courses.org/Content.php.
  
  

Continue to: Languages and Creoles in the Educational Resources Information Center (ERIC) Collection (PDF 2.18MB) Hard copies are available upon request.

Lee Vernon Douglas
May 2012