Librivox has a new home!

You can now find us at:

http://librivox.org

Some LibriVox stats for everyone:

• Days since LibriVox started: 71
• Number of volunteers on the forum: 65
• Number of volunteers who have completed at least one chapter: 27
• Number of chapters recorded (roughly): 130
• Average number of chapters produced per day: 1.83
• Number of books completed: 4 (one is not yet released)
• Number of completed books expected by the end of this week: 8
  
• Number of solo projects done or underway: 7
• Number of completed books expected by Dec. 31, 2005: 24
• Number of books targeted for completion by Dec. 31, 2005: 20
• Number of books targeted for completion by Dec. 31, 2006: 100

As we wait giddy with anticipation for the podcast of the last two chapters of The Secret Agent, by Joseph Conrad, our volunteers have been busy at their microphones, finishing three books:

• Call of the Wild, by Jack London
  (thanks to Gord, Kristen, Jean, and Miette)
• The Mysterious Affair at Styles, by Agatha Christie
  (a solo project by Alex)
• The Road to Oz, by L. Frank Baum
  (another solo, from Kara)

We’ll be podcasting these once we get through Secret Agent.

Well done to all of you… more books to come in soon, check our catalog to see what we’ve done and what we’re doing.

Please note:
We always need more volunteers; check our forums and join us.

Lifehacker.com sends a pointer our way, highlighting our audiobook recording advice.

And they added this wonderful illustration of why modulation is important:

Modulate. Never forget Ferris Bueller. “In 1930, the Republican-controlled House of Representatives, in an effort to alleviate the effects of the… Anyone? Anyone?… the Great Depression, passed the… Anyone? Anyone? The tariff bill? The Hawley-Smoot Tariff Act?” Monotones are evil. Bring life and vitality to your reading.

Well, here’s some more exciting stuff. We’ve been in contact with the Internet Archive to let them know about LibriVox. Brewster Kahle (listen to his inspiring talk, Universal Access to All Human Knowledge), the founder of the Archive likes LibriVox, has invited us to participate in an event with them.

Along with Yahoo and a number of universities, Archive.org is launching the Open Content Alliance to scan and make available books from the public domain. LibriVox has been asked to make a recording of Henry James’ An International Episode, which if I understand correctly, will be one of the first books in the OCA project.

This will be interesting. Here’s a NYT article about OCA, and a Boing Boing post. And here’s what Brewster Kahle has to say about the initiative:

Is Open Content the next step in the traditions of Open Source and an Open Network? Many people seem to think so (and wouldn’t it be great?). Working with libraries, government institutions, archives, technology companies, web companies– and we all are saying the same thing– it is time to have more great material available on the Internet and to be able to have it be open and free.

Exciting times for LibriVox and all you audiolit providers out there!

We were mentioned today on BBC 6, Breakfast Show, Tech Tuesdays with Dave Green … I don’t know if we were on the audio version, but we got a tip on their site:

There’s no denying that books are convenient, but you can also catch up on a few literary classics while doing other things (like driving, or going to the gym) thanks to a new site [librivox] where amateur “podcasters” record chapters of out-of-copyright hits - from Frankenstein to Agatha Christie - in free-to-download MP3 form.

We’ve been getting lots of hits from Italy, stemming from posts on download.it, melablog.it, qix.it and booksblog.it.

One comment noted that there were not yet any Italian books, and I responded inviting Italian volunteers to record something (for instance, La Divina Commedia di Dante!!) …

And then downloadblog.it launched this challenge (see google’s translation) to it’s readers, to get recording (either as volunteers with LibriVox, or in a separate project)…

“Speriamo di poter presto sentire qualche buon audiolibro italiano!”

Want to discuss the best way to record your chapters? Wonder about about how to pronounce character names? Are you eager to share a brilliant tip to help us all improve our readings?

Well now you can. We’ve added forums to LibriVox. We hope this will be a useful resource for all LibriVox readers, book curators, admins, and other volunteers.

Click on the forums link in the blue volunteers box to be directed to the new forums at mediatinker.com.

To participate in the forums, please register on the forum page.

Listeners, there’s a place in the forums for you to leave your suggestions, too.

We’ve had some technical problems with Chapter 7 of the Secret Agent. After much toiling and voice modulation a wonderful (and London-accented!) Conrad rendition was produced by Lloyd Davis. Unfortunately, the mp3 files seemed to get corrupted with big patches of Audacity silence. Any Audacity experts out there, please lend a hand if you can.

On the home front, we are fully-subscribed now for:

• The Secret Agent
• Psmith in the City
• Notes from the Underground
• Call of the Wild

Tolstoy’s Childhood, for some reason, still needs voices to go with it’s chapters! To hear why we chose Childhood, have a listen to Dale’s excellent rendition of chapters 7-9). To reserve a highly-coveted Childhood chapter, please comment here.

Two other points of note.

1. While we will only podcast sequentially one (or 2?) books at a time, we’ll post chapters as they come in to our LibriVox catalogue of books. So if you want to listen to not-yet-”released” LibriVox recordings, or to link to your recording, check the catalogue and it should be there.

2. We want your suggestions for LibriVox books. Please post your book suggestions below. Also, we would like the salespeople among you to go out and recruit volunteers to record books which you suggest … we’ll award special public domain prizes (yet to be determined) to anyone who can gather volunteers for a complete book. Spread the public domain audio gospel!

More press about audiolit podcasts, and LibriVox: a great article from the Book Standard. LibriVox friends Ron Evry, JD Bartlett, and Miette all get the warm glow of limelight as well. (Check our sidebar, under audiolit projects, for some others who deserve heaps of audiolit praise as well).