Basic Skills

Resources Basic Skills

The aim of this resource list is to provide heritage staff who have to work in dangerous situations, with electronic information that might assist them in safeguarding their vulnerable heritage.  The resources are presented in English but often other languages can be chosen on the website. Please inform us if any hyperlinks are broken, you would do us and others a great favour.

Perhaps you do not need of any of these basic skills listed below. However, countries that have been relatively isolated for some time and have not or have hardly been in contact with foreign professionals might feel the need to develop or brush up on these skills. In the post-conflict phase, the international aid industry, including heritage aid, will overflow the country. To apply or to be eligible for this aid often the aid agencies require a lot of paper work filled out according to western standards.

Note that the Resources will be updated from time to time. To follow the changes we suggest you subscribe to RSS Feed.

General Resources

There are more than plenty of open study sources on the internet. We only list a few of them below.

  • ALISON: Free Online Courses. Free, certified courses from the world’s top publishers.
  • Study.com. Video lessons and courses that can lead to college credits.
  • Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs). A directory (aggregator) of Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) from different providers.
  • Networklearning. This website aims to make good resources available, free, to NGOs working in the development or humanitarian fields. They create information and manuals to help NGOs build skills, and they link you to other resources. They cover subcategories like Training & Learning, Organizational Management, Money, Making Manuals etc., online GUIDES, Behaviour Change. Open Culture. Free online courses from the world’s leading universities.
  • The Open University.
  • edX. edX is the trusted platform for education and learning. Founded by Harvard and MIT, edX is home to more than 20 million learners, the majority of top-ranked universities in the world and industry-leading companies. As a global nonprofit, edX is transforming traditional education, removing the barriers of cost, location and access.
  • Coursera. Coursera was founded with a vision of providing life-transforming learning experiences to anyone, anywhere. It is now a leading online learning platform for higher education, where 73 million learners from around the world come to learn skills of the future. More than 200 of the world’s top universities and industry educators partner with Coursera to offer courses, specializations, guided projects, certificates, and degree programs.
  • Future Learn.

Accounting

Computer Skills

You will find all kinds of computer tutorials on the internet, especially on YouTube. Many are put on the internet to promote commercial companies in computer teaching programs. Yet, they might be useful for the beginning student. Here are some Freeware tutorials. The listing below also includes Social Media.

  • 7 Ways To Improve Your Social Media Skills And Influence. Interesting article on the website of Forbes (2012).
  • CustomGuide online Learning. Quick References. This site will give you complete access to their libraryof printable quick references of almost all Microsoft Office programs. Next, you can make use of a 30-day trial of CustomGuide training, including over 7,000 Online Skills Assessments and Interactive Tutorials.
  • English Arabic Technical Computing Dictionary. This is a compilation of the Technical Computing Dictionary that is under development at Arabeyes, the Arabic UNIX project. The technical dictionary aims to to translate and standardise technical terms that are used in software. It is an effort to unify the terms used.
  • Hootsuite – Social Media Resources. Hundreds of free resources to help you to suceed in Social Media, including guides with 2021 trends, organic and paid social media, the state of digital annual report…
  • Microsoft website. Do not forget to browse the Microsoft website for MS Office tutorials and other support.
  • Microsoft Office 365 Training. Outlook, Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Access…
  • Microsoft Word Free Tutorial. A series on Tips & Tricks for Making Word Awesome!
  • School Freeware. SchoolFreeware is a small group of people dedicated to creating “freeware”. They focus on creating programs and tutorials that may be valuable tools for many.
  • Social Media today. A website full of interesting sources for social media like Social Networks, Mobile, Practices, Webinars & Reports.
  • Word 2007 Tutorial. Part 00 of 13. Complete Microsoft Word 2007 Basic Level 1 tutorial from WordLearningZone.com. Video outdated (Word 2007), but it is still a good introduction to Word in general. In the same channel, you can find more tutorials.

Language

Conservation Glossaries. As in any profession unity in terminology in conservation is of the utmost importance. Standard translations of technical terms in conservation and heritage are imperative.

  • Arabic -English Conservation and Heritage  Glossary. ICCROM and Athar have published an online glossary of technical terms to assist in conservation of cultural heritage (Hossam Mahdy 2008). However, it cannot be accessed anymore online. If you click on the hyperlink you will get the pdf.
  • Arabic-English Conservation Glossary. This glossary was prepared and translated by Saied A. Hamed Hassan for The American Research Center in Egypt, Luxor East Bank Groundwater Lowering. It was developed for the ARCE Conservation Field School in Luxor in September, 2007- April, 2008.
  • Arabic – Romanization table. This useful table from ALA-LC is published on the website of the Library of Congress under Cataloging, Acquisitions.
  • Technical Vocabulary for Cultural Property Conservation English-Arabic. This vocabulary was developed by Fatma Marii and Usam Ghaidan for UNESCO/Japanese Trust Fund for the Preservation of the World Cultural Heritage in 2011 as part of the Restoration project of the Laboratory of the Iraq Museum in Baghdad.
  • Vocabulary of Museum Security Terms 3.0.  This online tool by ICOM and Staatliche Museen zu Berlin –  Preussischer Kulturbesitz will translate terms in different languages, however not in Arabic

There are all kinds of online translation tools. However, the quality is not always satisfactory. You have to find out for yourself. Here are some tools.

  • Bab.La Dictionary
  • Bing Translator – This program translates all kinds of languages for example Arabic – English and English – Arabic
  • Dictionary.com – This site holds many interesting language tools like Thesaurus, Word Dynamo, Quotes, Reference and Translator
  • Deepl. Translator program, however it is not yet available in Arabic.
  • Google Translate – Also a translator program
  • Lessan Online Dictionary – Translations from German/English/Spanish into Arabic
  • Multilingual Terminology. Very comprehensive United Nations Multilingual Terminology Database of the Arabic Translation Service.
  • Translation OnLine – Download, and also a Text-to-Speech tool.

On the internet there are plenty of English language tutorials. Here are some.

  • Byki. This company offers Arabic Lesson: English for Arabic Speakers on their website. You can try it for 7 days free of charge.
  • Englishpage. Learn English using our in-depth English tutorials featuring dozens of interactive exercises.
  • English For You. A whole series of lessons for different levels on You Tube.
  • English to Arabic. This is a series of English-Arabic-English lessons on YouTube.
  • Learn English Lessons.  Anglo-Link’s YouTube Channel. Their goal is to help you learn, improve and master the English language as well as to help you build confidence when speaking and listening in English. They will be regularly adding new English lessons.

Another way to learn languages is with different interactive apps:

  • Duolingo. With the mission of making learning fun and the goal to give everyone access to a private tutor experience with technology, Duolingo is a entertaining  way to learn a new language. Their free, bite-size lessons feel more like a game than a textbook
  • Babbel. Another online language learning platform

For more on English/Arabic glossaries and dictionaries click here… Not all the links on this ATS Translation website work but in general it is very useful. Very specific glossaries you will find on the appropriate webpage.

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