Online reference publisher Farlex Inc. has added 13 new titles to its flagship website TheFreeDictionary.com. among those works are Mosby's Dictionary of Complementary and Alternative Medicine, Gale Encyclopedia of Medicine, Collins Spanish Dictionary & Grammar and Collins German Dictionary & Grammar. The expansion marks the introduction of non-English language resources in addition to the site's previous offerings of English reference works.

The site also features an audio tool that allows users to learn proper pronunciation by speaking the words aloud. The tool previously offered only American English pronunciations, but now lets users hear either American English or U.K. English pronunciations.

In addition to the Britannica Concise Encyclopedia and English, French, Spanish, German and Italian dictionaries, TheFreeDictionary.com features legal, computing, medical, veterinary, financial and scientific dictionaries as well as the Columbia, Wikipedia and Hutchinson Encyclopedias.

As the Internet brings people from different countries and cultures together, having such a multi-cultural and multi-lingual collection of reference works in one place makes perfect sense. For Farlex and TheFreeDictionary.com, this seems to be the ideal area for which to expand. It's certainly a great way for the company to celebrate its fifth anniversary.

If visitors of TheFreeDictionary.com were not a culturally and geographically diverse group of users before, they will most likely be now. Also likely is the addition of even more reference works to the site. Farlex, which also operates TheFreeDictionary.com, is certainly building a rather impressive stable of offerings, and it's undoubtedly a work in progress. The Farlex folks are scheduled to speak at our InfoCommerce 2008 conference this November in Philadelphia. They will probably have a lot more to talk about then.