The LibriVox audio books project is rapidly gaining popularity. After a mention on the tech-hip blog BoingBoing, the number of volunteers has increased dramatically. LibriVox lets volunteers record their readings of public domain books from Project Gutenberg, and publishes those recordings as a public domain podcast.
Since BoingBoing linked to the project, initiator Hugh (“LibriVox was started, actually, because I wanted a free audio version of the Secret Agent“) has had to think up a list of new books to be read quickly, because demand was greater than supply for a moment.
And now the press is picking up on this and similar projects, with an article in the Book Standard.
Sometimes it just is not at all clear what makes a website or project so special that people will flock to it. If you want to see a virtual boom town grow, hurry over to LibriVox. Last week it was just a weblog where some fifteen people had promised to read a chapter of a book each. This week, “buildings” (books) are popping up left, right and center, and the “mayor” has already announced that he needs help, that he cannot run the “town” alone anymore. Who knows where LibriVox could be half a year from now, or a year?
This is the birth of an audio book publisher, and everybody gets to witness it.
Meanwhile, the TeleRead bloggers have done their bit by recording chapter 5 of Joseph Conrad’s “Secret Agent”.
( Moderator’s note: Also see LibrarianInBlack‘s take on LibriBox. – D.R.)
Nice going, Branko! What a great project for you to get behind! – David
Hey, cool! I might go over and record a bit myself. I used to record audiobooks for the blind when I was in college – this sounds like fun.
Hey, Larisa, go for it–and feel free to share your experiences here!
it’s a great project.i really appriciate a librivox for helping visually impaired people.good improvement with in short period of time.volunteer program is a good idea.
http://www.karaditales.com
i would like to volunteer as a reader. how do i go about that?
[…] Even if perhaps we should—do-it-yourself operations like Librivox to record public-domain titles have been going on for years, and Amazon’s taken advantage of audiobooks’ new popularity to start offering discount bundles […]