trials

Are You a Road Warrior?

As you think about traveling this year, whether for Christmas or spring break, take a look at Global Road Warrior, an online web site available as a trial for Northeastern-affiliated users. Global Road Warrior is supposed to help travelers, especially business travelers, know what to expect when they go to unfamiliar countries. It has information about transportation infrastructure, useful foreign phrases, how to dress, what to see. Details like currency conversion (updated daily) and types of electric plugs are also available. It shies away from recommending particular businesses (like hotels and restaurants). So the real question for us is, after all, this information is free on the internet, so is there a special value to paying for this particular site? Does it stand out in the internet crowd? Bottom line: Is Global Road Warrior worth the library paying for it, for Northeastern users? Try it for yourself, between now and January 9, and let us know what you think.

Try Mango Languages to Learn a New Language Online

Buongiorno! Guten Tag! Ni hao! As the librarian at Snell for foreign languages and literatures, I’ve received quite a few requests for the library to provide online language-learning products to the NU community. So I’m very pleased to report that we are currently offering a free trial of Mango Languages, a completely web-based language-learning system that focuses on actual conversation skills. The trial will last until the end of October. The languages currently available from Mango are Brazilian Portuguese, French, German, Greek, Italian, Japanese, Mandarin Chinese, Polish, Russian, Spanish, and English as a Second Language for speakers of Spanish, Brazilian Portuguese, or Polish. They plan to add more languages in the future. Mango is a very popular product with many public libraries and is supposed to be very easy to use. We are running the free trial now with the hope that we will be able to buy either this product or one like it. So, we need your feedback! Try Mango Languages and let us know what you think!