Guides and databases: Modern languages: Useful websites

Useful websites for modern languages resources

The resources listed below are freely available online, you might find some of them useful:

Delpher: Central access point for digitised Dutch books, newspapers, periodicals and radio bulletins from the 17th to 20th centuries.
Woordenboek der Nederlandsche Taal: Descriptive, historical, scholarly dictionary of the Dutch language.
Digitale Bibliotheek voor de Nederlandse Letteren (DBNL): a a digital collection of texts from Dutch literature, linguistics and cultural history, from the earliest times to the present. The collection represents the entire Dutch language area.
Association for Low Countries Studies: Inter-university teaching and learning initiative.
Dutch/Flemish internet resources: maintained by the British Library.
Dutch Studies Web: List of scholarly resources in Dutch studies. The guide is curated and managed by members of the European Studies Section (ESS) of the Association of College & Research Libraries.
Ilse: General Dutch portal with a good search engine.

The resources listed below are freely available online, you might find some of them useful:

Gallica: the digital library of the Bibliothèque nationale de France, this vitural library contains over 3 millions digitised documents including texts, images and recordings.
Larousse: searchable online encyclopedia and dictionary.
LITAF : Littérature Africaine Francophone: a searchable database of Sub-Saharan literature.
French Studies Web: provides links to scholarly web resources relevant to French and Frencophone studies. The guide is curated and managed by members of the European Studies Section (ESS) of the Association of College & Research Libraries.

The resources listed below are freely available online, you might find some of them useful:

Shortcuts in German Grammar
This Online Grammar offers a theoretical grounding couched in understandable terms, a terminological glossary and easily accessible exercises . Initially funded with the generous help of the Challenge Fund of the Unit for Enhancement of Learning and Teaching (UELT) of the University of Kent, the programme concentrates on the most frequently occurring points of difficulty for English native speaking learners of German. It continues to be expanded with contributions from experienced German instructors from various institutions.
Vorleser
An audio collection of downloadable popular stories read in the German language.
Wörterbuchnez
The Tirer Center for Digital Humanities team have created this 'Dictionary Network' to gather in one place the digital dictionaries and lexicons available online. The dictionary listed include: Althochdeutsch, Mittelhochdeutsch, Frühneuhochdeutsch, Goethe-Zeit, Gengenwart Sprache, Regionalsprachliche Wörterbücher and many more.
Deutsche Digitale Bibliothek (Kultur und Wissen Online)
A searchable portal for digitised materials from German libraries, archives, universities and cultural instituttion.
Das Digitale Wörterbuch der deutschen Sprache (DWDS)
DWDS is an online dictionary in which definitions of words give the historical context to the development of each word within that time period. This etymology may be helpful to linguists and historians.
German Studies - Association of College & Research Libraries(ACRL)
A collection of scholarly resouces in German Studies. The guide is curated and managed by members of the European Studies Section (ESS) of the Association of College & Research Libraries.
Compromised Identities? Reflections on Perpetration and Complicity under Nazism
Online exhibition developed from the Compromised Identities project. The project focuses on persecution and state-sponsored violence under Nazi rule and explores how perpetration and complicity are represented and understood both at the time and later. The exibition includes images, films and essays and other documents.
Black Central Europe
Black Central Europe collects sources on Black History in German speaking lands, arranged chronologically from 1000 AD until the present day this bilingual database is available in English and German. Sources include paintings, photographs, letters, excerpts of novels, sculptures, newspaper articles and much more.
BASE (Bielefeld Academic Search Engine):
BASE is one of the largest search engines for academic web resources, over 60% of its indexed records are available full text and Open Access.

The resources listed below are freely available online, you might find some of them useful:

Digital Dante is a venue for research and ideas on Dante that aims to stimulate new perspectives and new approaches to Dante Studies via interactive use of sounds, images and videos. Parallel to the original text there are two translations in English of the Divine Comedy.
Dante Society of America: The Society sponsors sessions on Dante at various scholarly gatherings during the academic year, publishes an electronic journal of critical notes: EBDSA.
Giovanni Pascoli Archive contains 60,000 digitized documents, which includes manuscripts, correspondence and photos for a total of 150,000 images. The archive is fully searchable online.
Enciclopedia Treccani: searchable online dictionary and encyclopedia. The Encyclopedia is divided in 5 subjects, which includes the Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani (Dictionary of National Biography.
Biblioteca Italiana: offers access to a collection of digitised texts which span from the Middle Ages to the 18th Century selected to represent Italian literary history.
Italian Studies Web lists scholarly resources for Italian studies. The guide is curated and managed by members of the European Studies Section (ESS) of the Association of College & Research Libraries
Digital Dante contains the Divine Comedy text in the Petrocchi edition with English translations by Mandelbaum and Longfellow. Pages include illustrations sourced from Columbia’s Rare Book & Manuscript Library. Digital Dante features original scholarship on Dante in various contexts including Image, Sound, History and Text.
Black Italia A portal that explores Black Italians' experiences. On this portal collates a number of resources such as videos, readings and educational resources.
Bologna University Press - Open Access: the BUP publishes OA books on various topics and disciplines including literature, linguistics, art, history and more.

The resources listed below are freely available online, you might find some of them useful:

Project Runeberg proivdes free electronic editions of old books from Sweden and the Nordic countries, one of the largest Nordic literature site on the web.
NORA (Norwegian Open Research Archives): searchable catalogue of materials held in open access institutional repositories in Norway. It covers all areas of the social sciences, sciences, arts and humanities with a special emphasis upon Norwegian and Scandinavian politics, economics, history and society.
Dansk Biografisk Lexikon: a digital facsimile of the 19 volumes published between 1887 and 1905. The Dansk biografisk Lexikon gives biographical summaries of Danish figures of cultural significance.
Timarit.is: this digital library comprise over a thousand of journals and national newspapers titles (historical and current titles). The database was created as collaborative project between the National Libraries of Iceland, Greenland and the Faroe Island. On some, recent publications there might be an embargo of 2-4 years, otherwise this is a very useful resouce to use to research publications which might be unavailable outside their countries.
Den Danske Ordbog (DDO): the Danish dictionary is freely available online. it's also availabe as mobile app to download.
Scandinavian Studies Web lists scholarly resources for Scandinavian studies. The guide is curated and managed by members of the European Studies Section (ESS) of the Association of College & Research Libraries.
Svenska Akademiens ordlista (SAOL), Svensk ordbok SO) and Svenska Akademiens ordbok (SAOB): the three dictionaries can be searched simultaneously on the same platform.

The resources listed below are freely available online, you might find some of them useful:

Iberian Studies (Spain, Portugal and Andorra) Web this guide lists and links online resources and gateways relating to Iberian studies. The guide is curated and managed by members of the European Studies Section (ESS) of the Association of College & Research Libraries.
LANIC: Latin American Network Information Centre maintained by the University of Texas.
Pablo Neruda Foundation - created to promote and preserve the artistic legacy of the poet.
MultiPessoa: this is a open access searchable database which collects the works of Fernando Pessoa and a few of his many heteronyms.

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