Ouch weblog: individual blog entry
5 Jul 06, 5:28 PM - Librivox - audio books in the public domai
It's fairly well known that people who are blind or visually impaired get a heck of a raw deal when it comes to sources for accessible, affordable books.
What may be less well known is that an organisation called
is working to resolve the problem. Their stated objective is:
"to make all books in the public domain available, for free, in audio format on the internet."
They do this by recruiting volunteers to record chapters of books, or individual poems or short stories. Once the entire book has been recorded into digital format, Librivox releases the audio files back on to the net to be downloaded by listeners. The catalogue of available works is
.
Recent releases include The Velveteen Rabbit by Margery Williams and The Invisible Man by HG Wells.
To take part as a volunteer reader, all you need is "a computer, some free recording software, and your own voice". If you're interested in volunteering,
check out the " page".
Librivox is currently seeking volunteer readers for too many books to list in full here, but examples include Jane Eyre, The Three Musketeers, Don Quixote,
Oliver Twist, The Divine Comedy and, er, How To Cook Fish by Olive Green.
If you don't want to read, you can still help out by volunteering to for certain types of error - i.e. repeated text - before a particular
work is released as an audio file.
And if you don't fancy volunteering at all, but you'd still like to promote the work Librivox is doing, you can download promotional materials such as posters
and audio spots for podcasts .
Remember, every book on the site is already in the public domain, and therefore more than likely to be available as a text download. However, if you prefer to read audio books, considering this is all done voluntarily and at home, many titles are well read, and the books are downloadable in a range of file sizes.
Why not give it a go. And if you're visually impaired, how do you get hold of your accessible books? Tell us using the form below if you have a moment.
Comment
At 01:56 AM on 08 Jul 2006, John Penta wrote:
Boggit: You should, really.
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At 06:20 PM on 19 Jul 2006, wrote:
Thanks for the plug. It was me who read the Invisible Man, so I really appreciate the mention.
Our reading list is unfortunately almost exlusively old books. They have to be public domain in the US, which effectively means published before 1923. (It can be a bit more complicated than that.) But if any published contemporary author cares to dedicate their work to the public domain, we'll consider it.
We'd love to be able to record more contemporary books, but we don't have any money and we don't like the idea of getting sued very much. Publishers tend to defend their recording and derivative works rights.
"Checking to see if they're available elsewhere first"
We do a little bit of this, but we generally feel it's not much of a hardship if there are multiple versions out there. Our versions are always completely free.
Thanks again for the mention, hope you enjoy our work, and please consider vounteering yourself!
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At 03:19 AM on 19 Sep 2006, wrote:
You can get the entire Librivox catalog as a set of .iso CD images chock full of .mp3s at this URL:
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At 02:06 PM on 15 Oct 2006, kumar wrote:
i am in UK, are all the books in the public domain for UK?
i dont want to get sued for downloading copyrighted material.
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At 08:47 AM on 19 Oct 2006, wrote:
it's really great oppertunity to help blend people.i really appriciate the Librivox.definitely i will participate in this volunteer program.how to download this text files.
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At 10:07 AM on 11 Nov 2006, Phil Laidler wrote:
I downloaded christmas carol and found it truly awful - it sounded a bit like a female computer voice.
The librivox idea is a great one but surely it would be best to have the books read in an appropriate voice?
EG christmas carol would be better in a british male voice, whereas Tom Sawyer is definitely better read in a US male voice.
Perhaps it would be an idea to assign certain books to certain people after they send a sample of their voice?
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At 09:30 PM on 28 Nov 2006, Laurie Irvine wrote:
I wholeheartedly agree with the above criticism regarding voice type - most of these books seem to be read in an American voice, which is entirely inappropriate for some of the material and can actually be quite off-putting.
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