Learning a foreign language is of constant interest--to students, travelers, lifelong learners, and job seekers. The landscape of such study, once offered only through a small selection of cursory guides and complicated audio courses, has radically changed. Now students can get the basics for free online, learn in conversations with native speakers in social media communities, and have access to a rich world of print and electronic resources that are exhaustive in their coverage. Andrew Walsh, a Graduate Assistant at the Literatures and Languages Library at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign and a master's student in Library and Information Science there, has written a guide to help librarians, be they in large academic institutions, public libraries, or high-school libraries, develop a modern collection of resources to aid the language learner. Walsh holds a bachelor's degree in Spanish and has enjoyed studying the language since his elementary school days and thus has great experience with the tools that really help one learn. While his guide is dedicated to resources for the Spanish language, it also serves as a model for those seeking to build collections in other languages--highlighting the types of tools available and suggesting the kinds of resources that create the most useful collections. Foreign language education is in the midst of a radical transformation, fueled by a boom of new technologies and applications for learning. Today, educational institutions are including more digital and interactive media alongside textbooks and traditional resources as they recognize the value of information technology. But what is the right balance? Videos, podcasts, interactive online games and quizzes are very effective for some purposes while printed books remain far superior for others. Existing guides in this area are typically either bibliographies of print material or informal lists of online websites. Rarely does either style of guide compare the different types of tools, which makes identifying the best resources a difficult proposition. Additionally the highly commercial nature of the web makes finding quality resources through Internet searches extremely difficult, as most websites are trying to make a profit from advertisements, sales of their own products or affiliate commissions. This column recommends print textbooks, grammar books and reference books while also comparing them to newly emerging formats in an attempt to paint a more complete picture of the ways Spanish is learned today. The resources were selected based on their usefulness, scope, methods, organization and clarity. Sources that address cultural realities and regional variations are highlighted, since Spanish has such diverse dialects and varieties across Iberia and Latin America. The sources included are bilingual. Advanced learners will want to consult monolingual resources as well. Of course, many other valuable resources exist beyond those listed in this work, but my purpose is to give collection development librarians a good starting point to build a collection based upon a group of core resources for each category. A title's exclusion from this list does not signify that it is not valuable. The target learning group for this collection of resources is college-level learners of Spanish, which means that advanced high school students as well as older adults can benefit as well. A short introductory section first lists a selection of quick resources designed to provide a fast and easy start to learning Spanish. Then the bulk of the guide is organized in categories based on the type of resource. Note: All online resources were accessed on 4/29/11. QUICK RESOURCES FOR BEGINNING SPANISH Between online lessons, podcasts and affordable basic language textbooks, there are plenty of ways for a beginner to get a quick introduction to the Spanish language at little to no cost. A variety of organizations provide free language instruction online, with various types of lessons typically geared toward beginners. …