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Wednesday, March 17, 2010

Acquiring Language Materials Through Your Local Public Library

You can acquire many of the materials that you need to teach your child a second/foreign language for free if you know how to use the services of your local public library.  If you live in a big city or other culturally-diverse area, your library may have an excellent collection of language books and audio-visual materials to check out.  but if, like mine, your library's foreign-language collection consists of a single shelf of mostly Spanish/English bilingual books, don't despair.  Instead, take advantage of interlibrary loan services.

The WorldCat website will allow you to locate items in the catalogs of libraries worldwide and will give you the distance from your home zip code to the nearest libraries owning a particular item.

With a local public-library card, you will be able to request items online through your state's library catalog and have them delivered to your home library.  Here are links to some state catalogs:

Alabama                                             Pennsylvania
California                                           South Dakota
Iowa                                                    Vermont
Maine

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