LingQ
Yesterday, while reading the comments on Stanley Fish’s latest New York Times rant on university education in the United States, I came across an interesting website for language learners called LingQ.
The site currently facilitates self-guided instruction in ten languages, including Russian.
As an advanced student of Russian, what was most interesting to me was the library of various types of podcasts and other audio programs, which are presented along with the full text in Russian. The library includes a variety of materials, including newscasts from Ekho Moskvy and Voice of America, audio books such as Tolstoy’s Detstvo and excerpts from Anna Karenina, and original programming specific to language learning with topics ranging from travel to business etc. Moreover, it seems to be quite easy for any user to add content to the site, as long as both audio and text are included.
The most exciting technical function of the site, however, is that it tracks the progress of your learning. By registering for an account (free), the website keeps a personal profile of the texts that you have read/listened to. If you come across a word that you don’t know, a scroll-over feature allows you to see the word’s definition(s) as well as to see any other clues or definitions that users have entered in the past. If you like, you can add new clues or other information, which will then be available to anyone learning the word, and you can save the word to your profile for further study (there is a cute flash card option for reviewing these words). Furthermore, the same word will from then on be highlighted when you’re reading until you decide that you’ve learned the word. It’s worth noting that this function only works for single words; expressions such as “travit’ baiki” (bol’tat’, rasskazyvat’ anekdoty) are not identified by the program, as far as I could tell.
More broadly, the site aims to create a language learning community by encouraging users to interact and by providing a broad range of other fee-based services (tutors, live conversations vis-a-vis skype, discussion forums, more developed courses as well as an option to submit your writing for correction). There are various levels of paid membership, and by contributing to the site you get free credits.
In terms of presentation, I found the site very functional. I wouldn’t go as far as to call it beautiful, but it’s certainly not overloaded with advertisements. But I did find the ubiquitous spring green banner promoting the $10/month plan somewhat tiresome. Audio files seem to come as mp3 downloads.
But all in all, this is the most interesting language-learning site I’ve ever come across. Its founder, Steven Kaufmann, is an also active participant on the site. He is the author of The Way of the Linguist (2005) and a blog called ‘the linguist on language.’
Does anyone have experience, positive or negative, with other online language learning sites?
Terry Martin’s primary source guide
Prof. Terry Martin has put together a collection of bibliographies of Russia/USSR related English-language primary sources , and he has generously made them available online on his web space at Harvard University.
Topics include: Document collections, writings of party leaders, biographies, foreign diplomatic sources, travelers’ accounts, and soviet publications. When appropriate, the lists are divided between materials available at Harvard and those available elsewhere. There is a link to a couple other general bibliographies, and it seems as if more bibliographies and links may be added in the future. One thing that might be added to the site is a list of English subtitled Russian/Soviet films.
The site is intended specifically for serious students, but it should be useful for researchers as well.
Seth Bernstein on the Sakharov Memoir Database
The Sakharov Memoir Database was created by the Muzei i Obshchestvennyi Tsentr “Mir, Progress, Prava Cheloveka” imeni Andreia Sakharova.
Seth Bernstein, a doctoral student in history at the University of Toronto, interned with the Sakharov Center in 2004 as a transcriber, and then used their database for his senior thesis. I interviewed him about his experience using it.
10.5.2009
Seth: alright, what would you like to know?
me: What is the center’s web address?
Seth: http://www.sakharov-center.ru/asfcd/auth/. For some reason it’s been having problems and trying to go to the search engine doesn’t get you anywhere. [According to a recent note on the site, the database is being updated and is unavailable-AB].
me: It’s a shame that the site isn’t working! … I’m curious, how representative is the online part of their overall holdings? Do you know if there were many memoirs still unprocessed in their archives? (I see from their site that they now have 827 memoirs). Do they have a mission to provide 100% of their memoirs online?
Seth: Of course they would like to provide access to 100% of the memoirs but my guess from their selection and my experience with them, is that they take memoirs that were easy to digitize, very famous or unique. So they have, for example, Anna Larina’s memoir as well as unpublished materials… just based on my searches I found that they have some pretty obscure memoirs
me: Are the originals accessible at the Sakharov center?
Seth: I’m not sure. I worked with a copy of the handwritten memoir. I imagine that it depends on which memoir you are talking about. They do have an archive there, though.
me: Is the “meta information” about the memoirs complete? (i.e. author, date of submission, any other information that could help contextualize them?).
Seth: This also depends on the author. Some have really complete biographies and others just have a date of birth and a very brief bio like their profession and maybe one or two cities where they lived. That said, I found that information sufficient for figuring our whether a memoir would be useful or not at a glance after I did a wider search.
me: I’m curious about your experience using the database for your undergrad thesis.
Seth: at first it seemed difficult to find some kind of organizing principle, so I ended up using the search engine quite a bit. So, I would search for, say, “Saratov” in the body of the text and then based on their biographical information it would be clear whether they would have relevant information in their writings. I was interested mostly in people who had been in the Saratov prison in 1937-39. So if I came up with Solzhenitsyn, who may have mentioned Saratov somewhere in passing, I was pretty certain I could skip him
me: Impressive, that out of 827 memoirs there were a couple who spent time in Saratov prison, 1937-1939.
Seth: Well that’s how I came to the topic. I wanted to limit my focus to a specific town or region. So I just looked for places which came up with a lot of memoirs and Saratov had a surprisingly large number. I recall there being 4 who spent some time there and a few others who passed through in transit
me: Just chance that there were so many, I guess?
Seth: That was part of it, but there were other factors that made it more likely that people would generate memoirs from Saratov. For example, many people were exiled from Leningrad after the Kirov assassination to Saratov.
me: When you were using the database for your thesis, was there anything problematic about the memoirs as a source?
Seth: I found that some of the authors stuck to what you would consider the typical tropes of the Gulag. A very romanticized version of interrogation with the interrogator sometimes falling in love with a woman
me: Anything else you would like to add about the online database as a resource for historians?
Seth: I wouldn’t recommend relying on it as the major source of a dissertation (or senior thesis) but the search logic is the same as with any other engine and it’s pretty surprising how much you can turn up and how little effort it takes.
me: By the way, have the memoirs been converted to text then, or can you see images of the original memoirs?
Seth: They are all in the database as text. It would be great to have the originals, but I’m sure that would take up too much space.
me: Transcribing must be a lot of work
Seth: It is, I got through about 150 pages in the course of a semester, and they only have 4 or 5 volunteers
me: Would you recommend the internship for young enthusiastic Russian learners?
Seth: Of course! It is incredibly helpful for your Russian and you learn how to type in Russian, which is a surprisingly useful skill.
me: I’m going to keep an eye on their site, and try it out once it gets back online.
Seth: I may try to get in contact with them for the year after next
me: Thanks Seth!
Seth: not a problem
Ben’s Index
Developed in 2004-2005 by Benjamin Zajicek , then a graduate student at the University of Chicago, Ben’s Index of Russian History Resources is a straightforward, well organized and uncluttered index of resources for the Russian historian. Though the site has not been maintained and is now somewhat dated, it still contains many valuable links.
There are a number of sections for history graduate students, which cover the profession in general, funding, useful software, filing taxes, ethics, reading, writing, style & citation, oral history and online resources and forums. Topics specifically for Russianists include archives, libraries, & catalogs, online dictionaries & encyclopedias, guides to the soviet archives, laws & regulations of the Russia, bibliographies, academic journals, professional organizations, museums, exhibits and memorials as well as a list of many prominent people in the field.
DiRT and Archives Wiki
One of my considerations as I begin keeping this blog, a forum for exploring online resources for Russian scholarship, is whether or not a blog is in fact the best medium for my project. An alternative- the wiki, the content of which would be shaped by a much larger group of editors, potentially anyone.
One such site is the Digital Research Tools Wiki, affectionately known as DiRT. The site promises to collect
information about tools and resources that can help scholars (particularly in the humanities and social sciences) conduct research more efficiently or creatively. Whether you need software to help you manage citations, author a multimedia work, or analyze texts, Digital Research Tools will help you find what you’re looking for. We provide a directory of tools organized by research activity, as well as reviews of select tools in which we not only describe the tool’s features, but also explore how it might be employed most effectively by researchers.
Despite the fact that the site is very new (there was a sneak preview in May, 2008), it is packed with information, especially lists of software. For those seeking to move way beyond microsoft word, mozilla, google mail and excel, this is a very useful site.
This wiki is a very effective “directory of tools.” It provides immediate access to comprehensive lists of the many resources out there to accomplish whatever task you might be interested in (выполнить и перевыполнить!). But the site, at least at its current level, is not such a convincing “reviewer.” The reviews come last: that is, you first choose a category of interest, then a resource, and only then do you find out if it has been discussed in a useful way. Clicking on a number of the items simply took me to their websites, which I could just have easily have found by searching.
Another wiki with a lot of potential is the American History Association’s Archives Wiki, “intended to be a clearinghouse of information about archival resources throughout the world.” I think it was created in 2007, and at least judging from the section on Russia, the wiki is just getting started. Only RGASPI has been included. Success will depend on more of us getting involved. As for me, there’s something a little too impersonal about the wiki format when it takes on such grand tasks. We have yet to see if, as a brief article from the Chronicle of Higher Education’s Wired Campus blog suggests, the Wiki has run out of steam.
In any case, I’m happy with the blog format for now.
English-language Historical Online Exhibits
Ben’s Index has a list of links to exhibits on Russian and Soviet history. Here is a selection of those that seemed up to date:
- 1936 Show Trials: Report of Court Proceedings
- The Chairman Smiles
- Library of Congress Soviet Archives Exhibit
- The Russian Empire Circa 1910, Full Color
- The Commissar Vanishes
- History of Soviet Science
- Virtual Tour of Lenin’s Mausoleum
- Birobidzhan
- Russia Engages the World, 1453-1825
- History of The Communal Apartment
Harvard University Refugee Interview Project
I learned today that this famous project has been fully digitized and most of the interviews as well as reference guides to the collection are available online. Carried out from 1950-1951, it consists of “329 general ’sociological’ interviews on the subjects’ life histories, which were known as Schedule A, and 435 topical ‘anthropological’ interviews with more focused lines of questioning, known as Schedule B,” as well as thousands of written questionnaires. Although I could not find precise information, it seems as if most of the interview materials were included in the project. More about the project can be found in the Summer 2008 issue of the Davis Center newsletter.
Russian language dissertations
While in Russia, I worked in the dissertation department of the Russian National Library (at Khimki) – and I learned that they have developed a program to provide digital versions of most new Russian dissertations in so-called “virtual libraries.” Khimki has one such “virtual reading room,” which is made up of computers that have access to their database of dissertations with links to full-text versions (They also have hard copies available there).
Is it possible to access the dissertation database from other sites or via the web? According to their website, called the Electronnaia Biblioteka Dissertatsii, there are designated libraries throughout Russia and in a number of former Soviet republics region that also have similar virtual libraries. I’m hoping to find out whether any large western institutions have sought access. Their website does provide a search option for dissertations submitted since 2004. I experimented with it a little and did not come up with as many dissertations as I found using the electronic system at Khimki in Moscow, which included dissertations since 2000, I think. There was only one hit for Архангельск, for instance, while in Moscow I found many more. According to the dissertation resources page on the Robarts Library website, the full text of these dissertations used to be available.
The Robarts page also suggests a second site, the electronic catalogue of dissertations. It has a very basic search function, but comes up with far more hits. I searched for архангельск and came up with 90 hits, and added the word России just as a test and came up with 6. Very little information is provided though up front about the hits. In order to get the complete results, the website requires you to submit an online request. The results though seem to come immediately, by email.
Google Books
I was pleased to discover today that Google Books can be searched in Cyrillic. In other words, the service enables researchers to do keyword searches of their massive and expanding database, including tens of thousands published in the Soviet Union collected over the decades by North American research libraries and recently scanned. Although the complete text is usually not available for viewing because of copyright restrictions, each reference provides some useful information, including the number of times these terms appear in the book (up to thirty, it seems) and up to three page numbers where the term is mentioned.
My initial attempts to use this function to perform a keyword search of a Russian-language text were a little frustrating. I decided to test the keyword search using the multi-volume collection Tragediia Sovetskoi Derevni. An advanced search for a keyword along with a word from the title: трагедия, and author: Данилов came up with a couple hits in volume II of the series. But at first I was unable to find my term on the pages where Goggle said it should be. To double check, I searched the online text for a word that I found on p. 339 in the hard copy. Google Books did find that word, but only one time, and only on p. 905. In the end–after some persistence–I determined that Google’s entry for volume II is incorrect: the online text that was actually searching was volume III. Once I had correctly matched the mislabeled Google text with the correct volume, I was able to make successful keyword searches.
Moreover, by searching the various volumes directly rather than returning to the general advanced search I was able to get hits for my keyword in the other volumes. Once I matched the mislabeled online texts with its respective hard copy, I was then able to carry out pretty effective searches. It’s important to note, however, that the keyword searches are limited in significant ways. First, the search did not catch my keyword in all instances. This is not surprising, I guess, given the problems inherent in converting digital images into text (OCR). Also, what is most frustrating is that the keyword search only provides the page number for the first three hits. It is thus useful for terms that show up very infrequently, but frustrating to use effectively when the keyword shows up more often.
There is a helpful discussion of some of the quality control issues in 2007 article by Robert Townsend, “Google Books: What’s Not to Like” on the AHA Today blog. Overall, despite it’s problems, Google Books is still a powerful tool given its scope.
Ben Zajicek Says:
April 27, 2009 at 12:15 pm edit
I’ve found some fabulous stuff on google print. Anything written before 1923 is available in Google books as a full-text downloadable pdf file. Suggestion: perhaps we could create a site with links to the permanent URLs for public domain books in Russian/related to Russia, find a way to post them as we discover them.
On the downside, I’ve tried to use this in my dissertation research and run into a lot of disappointment. The entire run of the Soviet psychiatry journal “nevropatologiia i psikhiatriia” is available on google print. The problem is that they are all post 1923, and thus deemed to be in copyright. I could still search them for key words and then go look them up in the print version, but the identifying information (year, volume, number) is almost all wrong… Sigh.
A useful resource that I’ve found for public domain sources to use in Western Civ courses:
James Harvey Robinson, Readings in European History: A Collection of Extracts from the Sources Chosen with the Purpose of Illustrating the Progress of Culture in Western Europe Since the German Invasions, v. 1 (1904) : books.google.com/books?id=4Z1FAAAAIAAJ
and v. 2 (1906): http://books.google.com/books?id=EDoNAAAAYAAJ>
Remembering the first man in space
I liked this post from ‘Soviet Russia’ on Gagarin’s April 12 1961 launch into space.
