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Getting Course Material From FSI or other official

Printed From: FSI Language Courses
Category: Language Courses
Forum Name: Member Contributions
Forum Discription: If you have course materials and are planning to contribute them to the website, this is the place to let everyone know.
URL: http://fsi-language-courses.com/forum/forum_posts.asp?TID=393
Printed Date: 16 January 2009 at 3:05am


Topic: Getting Course Material From FSI or other official
Posted By: mantis
Subject: Getting Course Material From FSI or other official
Date Posted: 02 May 2007 at 1:05pm
Can someone tell me ow to get course material from FSI or other govt. sources?  I thought the only was was via Barrons or Audio Forum.  There is no copyright on these materials, regardless of where is comes from.  I am not sure why there is this restriction on this sight.  I would like to know out of curiosity but I will respect the terms of this sight.


thanks



Replies:
Posted By: Chung
Date Posted: 02 May 2007 at 1:16pm
The government's source of FSI courses is http://www.ntis.gov - www.ntis.gov . The courses cost a little less than what you would pay from Multilingual Books or Audio Forum etc.
 
Another source for government originals is a library. Demipuppet has been able to contribute a lot of material since the local university library has lots of original FSI courses in its collection. This has the added advantage of saving on the expense of buying the materials.
 
In the past, the government's printing office (GPO) used to sell reprints of some FSI textbooks for a token amount, but it seems to have discontinued that service some ago. Every now and then, bookshops that specialize in old or rare books have a few copies of original FSI textbooks in their inventory. If you run a search with bookfinder.com, abebooks.com or alibiris.com, you'll see some original FSI textbooks on sale along with second-hand copies of FSI books that are being passed off by Barron's, Audio-Forum or Multilingual Books as their own.
 
In general, people without connections to FSI or access to a library that lends original government-issued FSI courses often go through NTIS and pay a couple of hundred dollars per course if they want to donate material for this website. It's more difficult to find suitable material from dealers of rare books but with luck, one can sometimes find something eligible for donation to this site.
 
The copyright status of FSI courses from private resellers has been discussed ad nauseum on this forum.
 
This thread is probably all that you need to know about gdfellows' policy.
 
http://fsi-language-courses.com/forum/forum_posts.asp?TID=231 - http://fsi-language-courses.com/forum/forum_posts.asp?TID=231


Posted By: DemiPuppet
Date Posted: 02 May 2007 at 9:52pm
I've actually had more more trouble finding AudioForum and Barron versions of the texts.

If you live in a major US city or near a university, they probably have a library containing a "Government Documents" section that has most if not all of the books.  They probably don't have the audio. It's usually located in the gloomy basement where almost nobody goes. Here is an earlier post on the subject:

You can also find all the book for free at a local "Federal Depository Library" 
Typically these books are not in the catalog, so you'll need to wander down to the government documents section of the library.  My university is a repository and has almost all the FSI language books.

http://www.gpoaccess.gov/libraries.html - http://www.gpoaccess.gov/libraries.html

Look around call number S1.114 (S = State Dept, D = Defense)
The Defense documents section usually have all the DLI Headstart books.





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