Mango Languages, an online language learning product for libraries, is a great example of a company being in
the right place at the right time. Libraries across the country, who have been struggling with a decision of
how to replace Rosetta Stone after their pullout from the library market, have subscribed to Mango and are finding
it more than just a replacement for a popular product.
During the spring of this year, Califa began negotiating with Mango and several of our member libraries
completed a review of the product in May, giving Mango an average composite score of 3.02 out of 4 in areas including
ease of use, quality of content, and accessibility. The review, which is
available here states that Mango is
much simpler to use than Rosetta Stone and Auralog and although Mango doesn’t have the same amount of pictures and visual
learning tools as the others, it is still an excellent product, especially for the price. By the end of June, nearly
10 Califa library members had taken the plunge and subscribed to this new product.
Some of you may have noticed that Mango does offer a free version for individuals; however, this version of the product
provides a limited number of languages per lesson. The library version offers up to 100 lessons for each language and the
user can select the entire lesson, a condensed lesson, select a vocabulary review or a phrasebook review. Additionally,
library-specific features such as branding and statistics are only available to those libraries with paid subscriptions.
The languages currently offered by Mango are Spanish, French, German, Brazilian Portuguese, Italian, Japanese, Mandarin Chinese
and Russian. ESL courses are offered for Spanish, Polish and Brazilian Portuguese speakers.
While our California installations are still in the setup phase, Califa did obtain some feedback from the Orange County
(Florida) Public Library, which has been a Mango subscriber for several months. In the first two weeks of this library’s
usage, they had 300 visitors; in June the library counted 600 visitors. Mango is certainly providing their service at a
good time and for those library patrons who are used to Rosetta Stone, they will hopefully be just as pleased with Mango.
One potential feature that libraries and Califa are looking forward to is downloadable lessons, currently available for
individual subscribers. If Mango responds favorably to the feedback that they are already receiving from libraries, they
will truly have a serious advantage over their competition.
Read more about this new service here.
Or read about past Featured Vendors at our archive
Mango Languages, an online language learning product for libraries, is a great example of a company being in
the right place at the right time. Libraries across the country, who have been struggling with a decision of
how to replace Rosetta Stone after their pullout from the library market, have subscribed to Mango and are finding
it more than just a replacement for a popular product.
