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Multicultural Resources on the World Wide Web

General Information and Web Directories

  • The Library of Congress - Country Studies
        http://lcweb2.loc.gov/frd/cs/cshome.html
    Full-text, indexed and searchable, this online version of the LOC's Country Studies/Area Handbook Program contains scholarly but accessible background information on some 100 countries.  Not intended to provide timely information on current affairs, these studies focus on the social, cultural and political history that has given each country its modern shape. Includes glossaries of terms specific to the social context of each country.

     

  • Schaffer Library Multicultural Resources
        http://www.union.edu/PUBLIC/LIBRARY/guide/mcmenu.html
    This award-winning site from Union College (New York) provides well-annotated bibliographies and Web site directories for multicultural information generally, as well as for specific cultural groups.

     

  • Yahoo! Society and Culture: Cultures and Groups: Cultures
        http://dir.yahoo.com/Society_and_Culture/
        Cultures_and_Groups/Cultures/
    An expansive directory to Web sites and other online resources related to specific cultures or, more often, countries. More than 150 cultures/nations are listed alphabetically, but subdirectories of Western groups are the most extensive.

Books and Other Materials: Reviews and Sources

  • MPEC - The Multicultural Publishing and Education Catalog
        http://www.mpec.org/
    Promotes multicultural books and other materials, with links to publishers, distributors and Web sites providing multicultural materials. Multicultural News Update page includes reviews of recently published multicultural materials, as well as announcements of related products or upcoming events.

     

  • MultiCultural Review
        http://www.mcreview.com/
    Primarily useful for its reviews of books and other materials having an ethnic or multicultural aspect, this site also includes a bulletin board for announcements relating to multicultural resources, as well as a list of publishers of multicultural materials.

Education and Training Resources

  • The Multicultural Pavilion
         http://curry.edschool.Virginia.EDU/go/multicultural/
    A well-developed collection of "Multicultural Education Resources and Dialogues for Students, Educators, and Activists." Quotations, song lyrics and visual art having a multicultural aspect; full-text articles on multicultural issues of education; "icebreaker" and "introspective" awareness activities for multicultural groups; an active bulletin board and listserv for discussion; directories to educational organizations and other internet resources.

  • USC Center for Multilingual, Multicultural Research
        http://www.usc.edu/dept/education/CMMR/
    Links to resources for multilingual and multicultural education, ESL and foreign language instruction, as well as resources related to specific ethnic minority groups. Many full-text documents and authoritative Web sites can be found from here. Multicultural book sources can be found under the link "Bilingual, ESL and Multicultural."

     

  • The Web of Culture
        http://www.webofculture.com/
    A variety of resources for those interested in communicating with and understanding people of other cultures. Focuses on resources for the business traveler, but useful for others as well. Includes a list of personal contacts from many countries who are interested in corresponding and answering questions about their culture; also, a collection of reference pages with basic geographical, cultural and visitor's information for most of the world's countries.

Holidays and Festivals

  • KIDPROJ Multi-Cultural Calendar
        http://www.kidlink.org/KIDPROJ/MCC/
    A searchable collection of holiday descriptions grouped by month, holiday, country and author. Entries come mostly from children throughout the world, describing how they celebrate the holiday. The brevity of the descriptions is balanced by the numerous and sometimes entertaining perspectives offered for certain holidays. Some entries in languages other than English.

     

Languages

  • Ethnologue
        http://www.sil.org/ethnologue/
    A comprehensive and searchable index to nearly 7000 languages of the world. The site is designed for linguists and other academics but is very useful for general questions of language identification and language-related demographic and geographic information. Includes reference pages such as "Top 100 Languages" and "Languages of Special Interest."

     

  • The Human Languages Page
        http://www.june29.com/HLP/
    A searchable directory of Web resources for nearly 200 language-categories. Includes links to online dictionaries (mostly bilingual and specialized dictionaries), language lessons, schools/institutions, linguistics resources, products/services, organizations, and a few language-related job resources. Links to many software resources for languages other than English.

Literature

  • Multicultural Resources for Children
        http://falcon.jmu.edu/~ramseyil/multipub.htm
    Bibliographies for children's literature related to 10 American cultural groups; links to resources, many with full-text articles, for the evaluation and selection of multicultural children's literature.

     

  • The Multicultural U.S. Fiction Web
        http://acunix.wheatonma.edu/rpearce/MultiC_Web/home.html
    Designed to complement a college literature course, this site's main strength is its indexed discussion of American ethnic cultures in terms of their history and their literature of the past half century. The work of a few representative authors is discussed.

     

  • Voice of the Shuttle: Minority Literatures
        http://vos.ucsb.edu/
    An extensive and organized list of links to information about the writers and writing of many of the ethnic minority groups in America. Links sometimes include biographies, bibliographies, photos, and audio files of authors speaking.

Magazines / Discussion Forums

  • Cultural Bridge Productions
        http://www.culturalbridge.com
    This attractively designed site creates a forum for presentations and discussions of the cultures of various countries, mostly in Asia, with rich photographic and textual content. Cultural Travelogues and Historical Narratives provide views of the life, culture and history of various countries; both foreign and local perspectives are portrayed through personal anecdotes, photos and news excerpts. A bulletin board is maintained with readers' responses, often lively, to these essays.

     

  • Interracial Voice
        http://www.webcom.com/~intvoice/
    Online magazine with articles, interviews and bulletin boards for discussion, focussing primarily on issues of race and ethnicity in the United States. Promotes popular and governmental recognition of multiracial and multicultural communities.

     

  • Multicultural Graffiti
        http://www.aiesec.org/webs/mg/Index.html
    An online magazine dedicated to promoting mutual understanding between people of different cultures.  Articles on Multiculturalism, Internationalism, Economy & Society, and Social Disintegration are contributed by university students from throughout the world. Also includes international comic strips.

     

  • STANDARDS: The International Journal of Multicultural Studies
        http://www.colorado.edu/journals/standards/
    Publishes written and visual arts, in a variety of forms, that are intended to take a controversial approach to multiculturalism or "cross-cultural activism." Book reviews, for both adult and children's literature, draw primarily from small and independent presses.

     

  • Y? - The National Forum on People's Differences
        http://yforum.com/index.html
    A moderated bulletin board in grand form, Y? provides a forum in which readers may submit a question about some aspect of another's culture or social group, with an answer usually provided by readers from that group. The questions/responses are grouped by social category (e.g. race/ethnicity, religion, sexual orientation), searchable and archived.  Topics are often provocative but are focused more on observations from daily life than on current social or political issues.

Statistics and Data

  • CIA - The World Factbook
        http://www.odci.gov/cia/publications/factbook/index.html
    A concise source of geographic facts and information on the social and political situation of nearly 200 countries, with special emphasis on the current status of the government, economy, infrastructure and military. The source of many other publications' statistical information on countries.

  • UN CyberSchoolBus - Resource Source
        http://157.150.195.19/Pubs/CyberSchoolBus/menureso.htm
    InfoNation and Country at a Glance provide geographic, economic, population and other social statistics for the nearly 200 member countries of the United Nations. Other statistical perspectives are given in Global Trends and City Profiles. UN Site-ings links UN reports suitable for educational resources, and The Gallery showcases children's and professional visual art with images from around the world.

  • U.S. Census Bureau - American FactFinder
        http://factfinder.census.gov/java_prod/
        dads.ui.homePage.HomePage
    Draws from Decennial Census data to make customized tables and maps displaying U.S. demographic information. Using a somewhat complicated interface, resources such as Facts about My Community allow you to generate detailed tables of ancestry and other demographic data on a variety of community levels--from "Urbanized Area" up through the nation as a whole.