We've moved to http://librivox.org

About LibriVox

LibriVox is a hope, an experiment, and a question: can the net harness a bunch of volunteers to help bring books in the public domain to life through podcasting?

LibriVox wants all books in the public domain to be available, for free, in audio format, on the internet. We ask volunteers to record chapters of books in the public domain in digital format; all you need is a computer, some free recording software, and your own voice! We are a totally volunteer, open source, free content, public domain project.

Once we get the files, we catalog them, and podcast the books, one at a time. Lend your voice to a good cause.

We get most of our texts from Project Gutenberg, and the Internet Archive hosts our audio files.

For the moment we don't need any money, we'll let you know if that changes!

Here's how it works:

1. LibriVox volunteers suggest books from the public domain, and we'll choose some to record.
2. Volunteers "claim" chapters, and record them to mp3.
3. Volunteers get the files to us, somehow!
4. We host our files on the wonderful Internet Archive
5. We maintain a catalog of complete and incomplete books, and podcast selected books

So, practically:

• if you would like to help, check the LibriVox Volunteer page, or go straight to the forum.
• if you would like to subscribe to the podcast, please:
  a) goto our feedburner feed
  b) and plug the feed (http://feeds.feedburner.com/Librivox) into your podcast receiver (for instance, ipodder)
• feel free to browse our catalog, take a look at our catalog

Inspirations
LibriVox was inspired by AKMA's audio volunteer project to bring Lawrence Lessig's book, Free Culture, to your ears; and Urban Art Adventures' Audio Book project. In addition to that, the following inspirations should be noted:

• the podchef (and podcasting in general)
• wikipedia
• rms & the Free Software movement
• gutenburg project
• creative commons
• ourmedia
• internet archive
• Brewster Kahle's crazy talk of Universal Access to All Human Knowledge
• the "books on tape" I used to listen to as a kid on long drives with some family friends
• and all those crusaders for free and equal access to the cultural and communication foundations of our world, who have worked, and continue to work tirelessly to make possible all the infrastructure for this project

A note about me:
Hugh McGuire, LibriVox founder, is a Montreal-based writer interested in the "free movement" in its many guises. More about him can be found at his weblog, dose. An interview with Paula B from The Writing Show describing the project can be found: here.

To contact LibriVox, send an email to: librivox AT yahoo DOT ca