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!”

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).

boing boing’s got a link to us! (disclaimer: I sent em an email!)

UPDATE:
… and subsequently, we’ve made it to the del.icio.us popular page. cool. Total hits as a result: 10,463 … wow.

I’ve had a few suggestions too about the project, and shortly (I hope) I’ll be writing up a “Call for Volunteers” to see if we can get some non-vocalists to contribute to the project as well, with some technical expertise to try to make this a more robust site that can handle more interest from people and really make a contribution to the global public domain audio library.

There’s an interview about LibriVox on the very well-produced Writing Show, a nice podcast by Paula B. We talk about public domain, audiobooks, joseph conrad, creative commons, and all sorts of stuff.

so we’ve made it to playlistmag.org! and got hits galore on the site. Thanks for the nice write-up, mat.

Chapter 3 is on its way, as is a more detailed audio intro to the project.

In the mean time, I’ve had some problems with the ourmedia.org uploader (won’t work on the PC, won’t work on the mac) and that means I can’t get files bigger than 10MB on the ourmedia site. I’ll be working on a solution.

And someone has offered to do an audio commentary on The Secret Agent! So that’ll probably come after all 13 chapters have been podcasted.

If you’re reading this, please give us a plug on your blog, we’re a totally volunteer project just trying to see if we can make this idea work, so consider volunteering to read a chapter; and sign up to our feed, download and listen. Think of it as a collective audio book club, chapter by chapter.