University of Michigan’s Language Resource Center

All about language programs, courses, websites and other learning resources
Speakeasy
x 7658

University of Michigan’s Language Resource Center

Postby Speakeasy » Fri Nov 06, 2015 7:04 pm

Many forum members are already familiar with the highly-regarded University of Michigan’s Language Resource Center Sales website that used to offer audio CDs for sale to accompany textbooks for some of the “more exotic languages". It would seem that the sales operation has been deactivated and replaced by a “free download link” subject to request. However, it is not clear to me to how the system works. Would anyone have additional information? Here is how I learned about this …

Late last week, in reply to a question from a fellow member, I advised him that the audio recordings that he was seeking to accompany a specific textbook were available on the University of Michigan’s Language Resource Center Sales website. Subsequently, out of curiosity, I accessed the site and discovered that the “View Products” function, which used to provide a list of the materials by language name, yielded the following automated message: “This content is no longer available. After 16 years of service, UM.Sitemaker has been gracefully retired.”

I sent an Email to the University of Michigan’s Language Resource Center requesting clarification and received the following reply: “Which materials are you interested in? We now send a free download link to the audio files.” I replied stating that I was not a registered student at the University of Michigan but that, if the audio files were freely available via download links, I would appreciate receiving a list of the materials available as well as all of the links. In addition, I asked if these materials were available free-of-charge to the members of the public or if they were available to registered students only and further requested information on restrictions of use, copying, duplicating, sharing, etcetera. Finally, I stated clearly that my interest was to advise members of this forum of situation and I provided a link to this forum.

As I have not yet heard back from the University of Michigan’s Language Resource Center, I thought that this partial information might be of use to the members and that it might also encourage others to investigate the situation and to provide an update. Here is the LINK to University of Michigan’s Language Resource Center: http://www.lsa.umich.edu/lrc/sales
Last edited by Speakeasy on Mon Nov 16, 2015 6:30 pm, edited 1 time in total.
5 x

Speakeasy
x 7658

Re: University of Michigan’s Language Resource Center

Postby Speakeasy » Mon Nov 16, 2015 5:52 pm

As noted in my initial post, above, I sent an Email to the University of Michigan's Language Resource Center requesting information concerning the audio recordings that were once offered for sale via their website. In my Email, I also asked whether or not the UofM would give their permission for the hosting of these now-freely-available audio recordings on privately-administered websites such as the FSI-Language-Courses website. Earlier today, I received the following reply:

QUOTE
Thank you for your inquiry. Unfortunately the LRC cannot grant you permission to re-host the files on a private server. There are many reasons for this is, including but not limited to:
• The LRC would like to track how many people are using our material
• We want to try to make sure that others are not selling material that is now free
Feel free to share the links we sent to you to other people, as we can track anyone that goes to those links, but please refrain from re-hosting the files and suggesting that anyone else do so, too. If you have follow up questions, please feel free to email me directly.
UNQUOTE

As the University of Michigan's Language Resource Center website no longer displays a list of the available materials, I have responded with a suggestion that such a list be posted on the website or, failing that, that I be provided with such a list which, upon receipt, I will post here.
3 x

Speakeasy
x 7658

Re: University of Michigan’s Language Resource Center

Postby Speakeasy » Wed Nov 25, 2015 7:40 pm

I have not yet received a reply from the University of Michigan's Language Resource Center concerning my request for a LIST of their FREE audio recordings. However, while exploring their website, I came across their COLLECTION of materials that faculty members and registered students can reserve for viewing/listening: https://www.lrc.lsa.umich.edu/catalog/

Although independent learners cannot reserve these materials, the COLLECTION ITSELF is useful as it contains materials for many of the "more exotic" languages that the LRC staff judged worthwhile acquiring for the faculty and students. As such, the list serves as source of information for some rather interesting materials that are available elsewhere.
3 x

Daristani
Orange Belt
Posts: 107
Joined: Wed Dec 02, 2015 3:43 pm
x 384

Re: University of Michigan’s Language Resource Center

Postby Daristani » Mon Dec 14, 2015 7:43 pm

Further to the above discussion, the University of Michigan still seems not to have posted any listing of their available audio products on their website. I wrote to them recently and asked about the audio to accompany their book Kurdish Basic Course (Dialect of Sulaimania, Iraq), by Jamal Jalal Abdulla and Ernest N. McCarus, and I got the following response:
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Here is a link to the Kurdish Basic Course material:

https://umich.box.com/FLACS-Kurdish

Please feel free to download the material and share the URL, but please do not rehost or share the files. We ask this in order to track how many people are interested in our material and that is accomplished by keeping track of (anonymous) download numbers from the links we give out.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The above language is consisted with their approach as cited above by Speakeasy; it seems that they have no problems with people freely sharing the download links, but prefer that the files themselves not be exchanged.

In accord with this, I hope that the above link is useful to all the vast multitudes (!) out there who are studying the Sorani dialect of Kurdish, and I would encourage anyone else who has similar download links for the U of M materials to share them here. (I see in another thread that Peter Beischmidt earlier obtained the audio for the Windfuhr Persian textbook from them; that link would be particularly welcome.)

I don't recall all the various language courses to which they previously offered audio, but per my memory, these include, inter alia, the Modern Standard Arabic course by Abboud and McCarus, the Modern Western Armenian textbook by Bardakjian and Thompson, the Levantine Arabic course by McCarus et al, and a number of others.
2 x

peterbeischmidt
Yellow Belt
Posts: 62
Joined: Tue Oct 06, 2015 8:25 am
x 105

Re: University of Michigan’s Language Resource Center

Postby peterbeischmidt » Mon Dec 14, 2015 8:26 pm

Here is the email I received. I would have posted it sooner if I had known that the people from the Language Resource Center are fine with it.

Hello Mr. Beischmidt,
I hope you are well and that your studies are going well! You may download the complete audio material for Windfuhr's Modern Persian from this link:
https://umich.box.com/UM-FLACS-Persian

Please let me know if I can be of further assistance to you!


Peace,
Phill Cameron | U-M Language Resource Center
2 x

Daristani
Orange Belt
Posts: 107
Joined: Wed Dec 02, 2015 3:43 pm
x 384

Re: University of Michigan’s Language Resource Center

Postby Daristani » Mon Dec 14, 2015 10:47 pm

Many thanks for this URL for the Persian audio, which evidently accompanies both the textbook and the two follow-on readers.

I've written to the University separately to inquire about the audio for A Textbook of Modern Western Armenian and will post the URL here in the event of a positive response. (The book itself apparently went into the public domain in 1987.)
0 x

User avatar
Random Review
Green Belt
Posts: 449
Joined: Tue Jul 21, 2015 8:41 pm
Location: UK/Spain/China
Languages: En (N), Es (int), De (pre-int), Pt (pre-int), Zh-CN (beg), El (beg), yid (beg)
Language Log: https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... 75#p123375
x 919

Re: University of Michigan’s Language Resource Center

Postby Random Review » Mon Dec 14, 2015 11:04 pm

Er, I'm not the most amazingly computer-literate person in the world but am I the only one here who thinks any reasonably determined person could look at those two URL's and (with perhaps a little trial and error) figure out the links for their other offerings? :lol:
0 x
German input 100 hours by 30-06: 4 / 100
Spanish input 200 hours by 30-06: 0 / 200
German study 50 hours by 30-06: 3 / 100
Spanish study 200 hours by 30-06: 0 / 200
Spanish conversation 100 hours by 30-06: 0 / 100

Daristani
Orange Belt
Posts: 107
Joined: Wed Dec 02, 2015 3:43 pm
x 384

Re: University of Michigan’s Language Resource Center

Postby Daristani » Mon Dec 14, 2015 11:21 pm

Well I confess that I did try, plugging in the names of some of the languages for which I know they had earlier published courses, but nothing seemed to work.

I recall that among their Arabic offerings were courses for Egyptian (four volumes) and Moroccan (two volumes, if memory serves), as well as an Islamic Arabic reader in standard Arabic, and that they also had published courses in Turkish and Tamazight, for all of which they used to sell the audio on cassettes and then later CDs.

Some of these other audio resources, along with the respective books, are already floating around there in Internet-land, but I haven't linked to any of these, so as to respect their policy of only sharing the links to their own URLs.
0 x

Speakeasy
x 7658

Re: University of Michigan’s Language Resource Center

Postby Speakeasy » Tue Dec 15, 2015 12:41 am

I, too, tried replacing the name of the language in the above links by ones for which I believed the University of Michigan held audio recordings and I received an Error Message. Nonetheless, the situation remains unclear to me...

Initially, I received a friendly reply from the UofM asking me to specify the language for which I would like the audio recordings. I responded with a request for either (a) all of the links, or (b) a list of the languages for which audio recordings are available, and (c) in either case, given that the files are freely available, that the list or links be posted on the website. I repeated my request three times but have not received a reply.

In contrast, two forum members have requested links to specific audio recordings that, apparently, they knew existed. They received the links and, as of this post, these links are still active.

Based on this discussion thread alone, one could conclude that the University of Michigan is quite willing to provide free access to their collection of audio recordings, but "you have to know" what their collection consists of, as they seem reluctant to share the list. I will not speculate how this process is meant to work. However, given the silence on my repeated requests, perhaps some other forum member would like to ask the UofM for a list or an explanation of how the system is meant to work, either of which they could post here.
0 x

Daristani
Orange Belt
Posts: 107
Joined: Wed Dec 02, 2015 3:43 pm
x 384

Re: University of Michigan’s Language Resource Center

Postby Daristani » Tue Dec 15, 2015 3:48 pm

I wrote to the U of M yesterday evening asking about the audio to the Western Armenian textbook; I got a response first thing this morning, indicating that my correspondent was uploading the files as he was writing the e-mail. Here's the URL for the Armenian audio files: https://umich.app.box.com/UM-FLACS-Mode ... rnArmenian

EDIT: It appears that one CD, covering lessons 4-6, is missing from the above upload; I've written back to ask about it, and will advise if/when I get a response.

So it appears that, at least in this case, the audio wasn't available for download until someone had requested it.

The email message also included the following: "Please feel free to share the link with others, but also please do not distribute the audio files yourself. We like to know how many people are interested in the material we share! We keep track of how many people are interested in the material by monitoring the downloads of the audio files."

As for the Armenian audio, it includes a number of spoken exercises rather than simply readings of the texts in the book. The book itself, (A Textbook of Modern Western Armenian, by Kevork B. Bardakjian and Robert W. Thomson), was published in 1977 and was copyrighted only until 1987, after which it was to enter into the public domain. Someone has placed a very clear PDF of the original book online, which can be downloaded here: http://turbobit.net/nl8lsgc0r85u.html

More recently, an updated/expanded version of the book has been published, with the same title, by Bardakjian and Bert Vaux. This book is more attractively printed, and has a substantial amount of additional material, but the initial 31 lessons appear at a superficial glance to be largely the same. The newer version can be ordered very reasonably from here:
http://www.lulu.com/shop/bert-vaux-and- ... 66771.html

I think the audio would probably work with either version of the book.

Further on the Michigan materials in general, I think that a lot of them, particularly the various Arabic materials, are really well done, having been written by real experts in the language and provided with substantial audio material to supplement the books. Unfortunately, they were produced with the technical possibilities available at the time, meaning they were essentially written on typewriters and then reproduced, and so lack the visual appeal of materials being produced these days. But in terms of content, I think they were excellent, particularly when used with the audio, so it's wonderful that the University is making the audio available for free download.

I don't have any list of the materials they produced, but will dig around my bookshelves and my computer and in a later posting list the titles/authors of the ones I'm able to identify; anyone interested can then write to them and ask about the audio. (And please list the URLs here so that, even if the University itself doesn't publish a listing, we can eventually have a listing here for those who find the materials useful.)

In my experience in asking for the audio for two languages, the University's contact person, Mr. Cameron, has been extremely responsive and very friendly in his emails. If he didn't respond to Speakeasy's request for a listing of the available materials, it could be that, as in the case of the Armenian audio, he would have had to upload a substantial quantity of the materials in question, and there may have been a preference to be more responsive to specific individual requests rather than a wholesale request for everything.

In any event, I think the Michigan materials are a tremendous resource for language learners, and really appreciate their willingness to make them available for free download.
Last edited by Daristani on Tue Dec 15, 2015 8:25 pm, edited 1 time in total.
4 x


Return to “Language Programs and Resources”

Who is online

Users browsing this forum: No registered users and 2 guests