Building all kinds of housing – nests, burrows, hives – is a major occupation throughout the animal kingdom. One of the biggest achievements of man in this art is certainly the high gothic style, described in detail by John Ruskin in The Seven Lamps of Architecture.

What to do when huddled together in a drafty cave? Talking of course. The step to singing is but a tiny one. How to do it properly, is taught in How to Sing by Lilli Lehmann, considered one of the best singers of her time.

No great voice? You can learn an instrument instead! Clumsy fingers? In that case, the last resort is to become a critic. In How to Appreciate Music, Gustav Kobbé explains all you’ll need for the job.

A well versed and highly dangerous critic hides behind the mask of The Phantom of the Opera. Read the famous novel by Gaston Leroux and glimpse behind the scenes of the theater at their artists and patrons.

Homer De Vere has worked as an actor for ages, but now his voice is failing. The solution for his family is quickly found in the new – silent – film industry. Laura Lee Hope describes in The Moving Picture Girls how they adjust to the new medium.

Paintings cannot move or change. Except for The Picture of Dorian Gray of course, which records every little transformation of its motive, who instead lives on in eternal beauty. Have fun with our dramatic reading of Oscar Wilde’s horror story; or listen to a German translation of it.

William Blake is known for his dark and scary paintings, but also for his Poems. This collection contains his Songs of Innocence and of Experience.

Collecting famous paintings can be a very pricey hobby – and also a dangerous one. The lives of a nurse, a pawn shop owner and an art collector meet in The Pagan Madonna, an intriguing novel by Harold MacGrath, set in Shanghai.

Austria is where The Street of Seven Stars is located. Harmony studies violin to become a professional musician. When money runs out, Peter is determined to protect her. But who of them will have to sacrifice their passion? Find out in the love story by Mary Roberts Rinehart.

Sarrasine, a young French sculptor, is also madly in love – with La Zambinella, an Italian singer. Honoré de Balzac describes the winding roads the youth is willing to travel in search for his art and his muse.

Enjoy – and be creative!

A Tech Infrastructure Overhaul

The Mellon grant will go towards rebuilding LibriVox’s technical infrastructure, and improving accessibility of the LibriVox website (we’re hiring a dev and project manager on contract, if interested, please apply, info here: LibriVox hiring).

“It’s fantastic to get this support from the Mellon Foundation,” said LibriVox founder Hugh McGuire. “It will be put to good use, helping our hard-working volunteers create many more free audiobooks. We’ve made 5,500 free audiobooks to date, and we hope to make many more in the future.”

LibriVox, a volunteer project of the Internet Archive, gets volunteers from around the world to make audio recordings of public domain texts, and gives those recordings away for free. All LibriVox audiobooks are hosted at the Internet Archive.

5,467 Free Audiobooks

Founded in 2005, LibriVox has to date produced 5,467 free audiobooks, in 31 languages. Popular audiobooks include “The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes,” by Arthur Conan Doyle, “Adventures of Huckleberry Finn” by Mark Twain, and “Jane Eyre,” by Charlotte Brontë. In addition to novels, the LibriVox collection includes numerous texts of importance from philosophers such as Kant, Descartes, and Hume, political documents such as the “Universal Declaration of Human Rights,” and scientific texts including as Einstein’s “Relativity,” and Darwin’s “Origin of the Species.”

100 Million Downloads

“The LibriVox collection is one of the most popular on the Internet Archive,” said Brewster Kahle, Founder and Director of the Internet Archive. “100 million downloads is awesome. LibriVox is an integral part of our commitment to making important texts available to the world in the best format for people, and we are thrilled at the support from the Mellon Foundation.”

Cori Samuel, a long-time LibriVox volunteer, who has recorded some of the project’s more popular books, was in shock at the numbers. “It’s hard to believe that what started out as a small project among some passionate people on the web has turned into something so big. It’s incredible to imagine that we could have touched the lives of 100 million listeners.”

For More Information

For more information, please contact Hugh McGuire, LibriVox founder: hughmcguire@gmail.com.

* a technical project manager
* a sysadmin/advisor
* a PHP/Ruby developer

Pay range is “starving non-profit contract price” … or somewhere between $35-50/hour.

The objectives of the technical overhaul are:
1. To implement a LibriVox website redesign
2. To improve LibriVox’s internal workflow systems
3. To improve catalog accessibility through API
4. To complete a security audit
5. To assess server infrastructure

We are looking for some great people. Maybe you?

(see very bottom for how to apply).

PHP & Ruby developer

about 25-40 hrs/week over 20-30 weeks

The PHP & Ruby developer will be responsible for:

• Working with the technical project manager to define the scope of work
• Doing a full code review of existing LibriVox software
• Defining software engineering decisions and specifications for refactoring the work planned
• Refactoring existing LibriVox code
• Implementing a number of fixes and new features

You should have at least 2 years experience in software development, with expertise in:

• PHP
• Ruby
• MySQL
• LAMP stacks
• WordPress

The ideal candidate will have a degree in software engineering or computer science, or significant experience in developing and implementing web software. You should be comfortable working in a distributed project. And we’re looking especially for developers with experience in non-profit and open source communities, with many extra points for having experience in the LibriVox community.

Scroll down to see how to apply.

Technical project manager

10-20 hrs/week over 20-30 weeks

The technical project manager will be responsible for:

• coordinating work with the LibriVox volunteer community to better understand specific technical needs under the scope of the project
• defining the detailed scope of work with the other contractors, in conjunction with Internet Archive staff and senior LibriVox volunteers
• establishing a more detailed work plan
• ensuring timely delivery of technical progress
• establishing a detailed budget
• ensuring the project stays under budget and on time
• communicating progress to the LibriVox community (volunteers, listeners), to the Internet Archive, and to other stakeholders

Ideally you’ll have an Engineering or Management degree, or significant technical project management experience.

We’ll be happier if you’ve got experience working in non-profit, open source communities, and even happier if you have experience in the LibriVox community.

Scroll down to see how to apply.

Sysadmin/systems architect

The sysadmin/systems architect will be responsible for:

• Evaluating the current LibriVox systems and server setup
• Overseeing a security audit
• Working with the developer and project manager to propose an ideal hosting solution, including reduced costs
• Making a recommendation about longer-term hosting arrangements, with cost being a significant factor
• Depending on scale of work, possibly moving LibriVox to a new server setup.

The ideal candidate will have 5 years experience running MySQL systems, with particular experience running servers with big installations of phpBB forum software and WordPress installations.

Scroll down to see how to apply.

How to apply!

To apply please send the following items to jobs@librivox.org:

1. a brief description of why you’d like to help LibriVoix
2. a CV with references
3. a comment on your favourite LibriVox recording
4. MAKE SURE YOU TELL US WHAT POSITION YOU ARE APPLYING FOR

Henry Morgenthau was the US ambassador to the Ottoman Empire 1913 – 1916. He was one of the first and most prominent people to speak out against the Armenian genocide, an account of which can be found in his book Ambassador Morgenthau’s Story.

Tamburlaine the Great, a play in two parts by Christopher Marlowe, is loosely based on the life of Timur the Lame. Its beginnings take us to Persia.

From there, we go straight to Kafiristan, a remote part of modern Afghanistan, where The Man Who Would be King is set. Two adventurers set up a scheme to become kings – if they succeed or not can be found out in the masterful story by Rudyard Kipling.

Rabindranath Tagore was the first non-European to win the Nobel Prize for Literature. His collection of essays Sadhana, the Realisation of Life, describes Indian culture, beliefs and philosophy from various points of view.

The first Anglo-Burmese War was fought over the control of northeastern India, and marked the beginning of the end of Burmese independence. On the Irrawaddy is a fictionalized account of the war, written by George A. Henty.

Probably the most famous account of Asian court life is Anna Leonowen’s book The English Governess at the Siamese Court. While a great success in the West, her memoir of six years with the Royal family is still deemed controversial in Thailand today.

Assume something terrible happens to you and all you want is to die – so you engage a hitman. But then you change your mind – and you have to get hold of the killer… This is essentially the plot of The Tribulations of a Chinaman in China, a humorous adventure by Jules Verne. We also have a French version of this book.

China was only the end of a long journey that started in Siberia and led Ferdinand Ossendowski also through Mongolia on his escape from the Bolshevik Revolution. Beasts, Men and Gods – which were the most dangerous?

One Hundred Verses of Old Japan is a compilation of Japanese poetry by 12th century poet Fujiwara no Teika. It contains one poem each from 100 poets. It has been translated into many languages, but we also have the Japanese original.

Young Crisostomo Ibarra returns to the Philippines after studying in Europe. He expects to get married to his childhood sweetheart, but the wrath of the local curate stands in their way… Read Noli Me Tangere, the novel by José Rizal, which led to the country’s revolution – and to the death of the author.

Enjoy your travels – and send a postcard!

Arabella, The Female Quixote, is a truly mighty woman. After all, she can kill with a mere look! Or so she believes… Read the wonderful parody of “Don Quixote” by Charlotte Lennox, and who knows, maybe Arabella can be cured by her fiance?

Miss Sara Sampson has just eloped with Bellefont, who promised to marry her. Much to the dismay of her father, and to that of the former mistress of the unfaithful Bellefont. Listen to G. E. Lessing’s drama as a furious Marwood uses all female tricks to get her lover back.

In Kate Chopin’s novel The Awakening, the tables are turned: The female protagonist is the promiscuous one. Never before were the desires of a woman described so forthrightly, and the book promptly caused a scandal.

Amantine Lucile Aurore Dupin caused many scandals too: she was smoking and wearing trousers at a time women were not supposed to. And she was able to sustain herself as writer – The Devil’s Pool is one of here novels (also available in French) – but only by writing under the male pseudonym George Sand.

At least she grew up in a time when a formal education for women was not a complete taboo any longer. Until then, many a Woman in Science faced almost insurmountable obstacles, as described in their biographies through the centuries, collcted by John Augustine Zahm.

With education off the list, the next item was: voting. And, just as with abolition, the frontiers ran right through families, like in The Sturdy Oak, a novel in 14 chapters by just as many authors. It tells the story of a newlywed lawyer who is deadset against suffragists… until his wife discovers she might be one herself…

A somewhat more realistic description of the suffrage movement is Eighty Years and More, the memoirs of Elizabeth Cady Stanton, one of the best known suffragists of the United States, who was at times also working in Great Britain.

Voltairine de Cleyre was an important leading figure in the American anarchist movement, and a renowned writer and poetess. Here, we put a selection of her Poems in the spotlight.

At this early time of women’s lib, women travelling the world alone slowly became more common. Go with Ida L. Pfeiffer on A Visit to the Holy Land, Egypt and Italy. The proceeds of this book funded her next adventure: Iceland.

If you don’t have a husband or children, and you’re neither intersted in politics nor in foreign lands, you are bound to become a grumpy, lonely woman, like The Third Miss Symons in F. M. Mayor’s story. Right?

Enjoy – and pamper yourself!

Let’s start in the West, in lovely green Ireland, where Clodagh, daughter of The Gambler Dennis Asshlin fights for her family’s honor – by marrying the wrong man. Find out in Katherine Thurston’s novel whether she can escape the Asshlin curse by traveling Europe.

When thinking about Portugal, one is often not aware what great discoveries we owe to this seafaring nation. The Lusiads by Luis Vas de Camões, a national epic in poem form, tells mainly about Vasco da Gama’s voyage to India.

To France we owe the first Declaration of Human Rights – and several great novels about people falsely accused and imprisoned. Read the tragic – and real – story of Alfred Dreyfus, an innocent sent to exile in Five Years of my Life 1894 – 1899.

Further to the North we get to another seafaring country, The Netherlands. With about 25 % of the country below sea level, water in all forms is an important topic. What more so when the big prize for the ice skating race is a pair of silver skates! Will Hans Brinker in the story by Mary Mapes Dodge win the race?

Värmland, a province of Sweden, also has many lakes and rivers. Selma Lagerlöf was born there and her debut novel The Story of Gösta Berling about a defrocked priest weaves local stories about cavaliers enjoying cards, music and loveaffairs, into a whole.

The end of love and marriage, and how it came about – by murdering his wife – is told by the main character of The Kreutzer Sonata, Pozdnyshev. This novel by Leo Tolstoy caused international outcries – and was promptly censored in Russia.

Eyes like the Sea is a love story between an artist and a woman who eventually chooses another husband. But the ties between them were made with rubber, loose and tight at different times… Mór Jókai’s novel won the 1890 prize for literature of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences.

Switzerland is famous for its mountains, and climbing them is no science, you think? It certainly is if you are the first to do so – like Edward Whymper who finally seized the peak of the Matterhorn in 1865. This and many other climbing expeditions are recalled in his book Scrambles among the Alps in the Years 1860 – 69.

Another impressive mountain lies on Sicily: Mount Etna, the largest active volcano in Europe. On the opposite side of the island, Luigi Pirandello was born, the third of so far six Italian Nobel Prize winners for literature. His most famous play is Six Characters in Search of an Author.

About 1400 islands and 80% of mountains combine to Greece, considered the true Old World and the cradle of modern civilization and democracy. Herodotus was one of the first people to write a travelogue, his Histories provide a fascinating record of numerous countries, their affairs and traditions in the 5th century BC.

Enjoy your travels – and send a postcard!

Today, many websites around the Internet have “gone dark” to protest against, and raise awareness about some very important proposed legislation in the United States, which could fundamentally alter how the Internet operates: House Bill 3261, The Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and S.968, the PROTECT IP Act (PIPA).

Archive.org (where LibriVox hosts its audio), is going dark from 6:00 am – 6:00 pm PST on Wednesday January 18 (9:00 am – 9:00 pm EST – 14:00 – 02:00 GMT) as part of this important protest. This means that the LibriVox catalog will not be accessible during this time.

Legislation such as SOPA and PIPA directly affects libraries (pdf) such as the Internet Archive — and indeed LibriVox — which collect, preserve, and offer access to cultural materials. Furthermore, these laws can negatively affect the ecosystem of web publishing that led to the emergence of the LibriVox.

These bills would encourage the development of blacklists to censor sites with little recourse or due process. The Internet Archive (and with it LibriVox audio files) are already blacklisted in China. There are real concerns that this legislation could lead to similar blacklists in the United States.

For United States residents, please inform yourself of these issues, and if you think they are important, please take action.

For non-US residents: Sorry for dragging you into this, and if you are willing, you might wish to sign a petition to the State Department to express your concern.

New Year – New Resolutions, which are more often than not thrown out shortly after the Christmas decorations. But maybe the following 10 gems from our catalog help you keep them for longer this year.

Top Resolution #1 is doing less of stuff: drinking, smoking, eating… The successful treatment in the clinic of Charles B. Towns inspired one of his patients to set up Alcoholics Anonymous. Read the doctor’s book Habits that Handicap how addictions of any type come to pass and how to kick them.

Top Resolution #2 is doing more of stuff: exercising, reading, studying… The problem with this is usually a lack of time. But Arnold Bennett knows exactly How to Live on 24 Hours a Day and how to make the best of each one of them.

With all this time on your hands, you should certainly spend some of it on Isabella Beeton’s Book of Household Management. After all, you never know when you’ll have to wean a calf, cook dinner for 25 people or advise a new butler about his duties.

At least the latter is not a problem for the grandfather of Little Lord Fauntleroy, who also tries to teach real British manners to the young American boy. However, it soon becomes clear in the charming novel by Frances H. Burnett who is really the one in need of lessons.

Obviously, you cannot start such lessons early enough if you want them to stick. The Goop Directory by Gelett Burgess contains a number of little poems to teach the right behaviour to children.

Such lessons were certainly not taught to Harvey Cheyne, who ends up a rather spoilt brat. When he is swept overbord on the Atlantic, a group of fishermen save his life. Refusing him any further indulgences is what turns his life around, as can be read in Rudyard Kipling’s novel Captains Courageous.

Another life-turning experience is the one by little Tip. He receives a Bible and is encouraged to use it as a guiding light to turn around his naughty ways. Pansy’s book Tip Lewis and his Lamp tells you whether he succeeds or not.

Louisa May Alcott tells the story of the four March girls during the absence of their father in the civil war. We hear about their lives, their ambitions and sorrows on growing up to become Little Women.

We all change profoundly while growing up, but often we do not recognize this along the way. A barely fictionalized account of the coming of age of James Joyce is his highly acclaimed A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man.

However you change, and whenever you do it, it’s best not to wait until the very end. Everyman can vouch for that, but not for having led a good life. Listen to our drama prodution to find out whether his friends help him through judgement.

Enjoy – and keep them resolutions!

Let’s start with the obvious: Christmas! You know the story: Bethlehem, manger, shepherds, star, three wise men,… Well, there is also the Story of the other Wise Man, who got lost on the way… Listen to the story by Henry van Dyke to find out if he reached his goal in the end.

Great similarities there are between the story of Jesus and that of John the Baptist. His life starts around the same time, and ends almost equally tragic: through the sheer stubbornness of Salome. Listen to our dramatic production of Oscar Wilde’s play.

Henryk Sienkiewicz tells about the burning of Rome by Emperor Nero, and the love that blossoms in its ruins between the Roman Marcus Vinicius and the Christian Lygia, in his famous book Quo Vadis.

“Where are you going?” is also asked of Evan McIan and James Turnbull. The devout Catholic and convinced atheist wander about to find a good spot for their duel. Whether the former gains satisfaction from the latter for insulting the Virgin Mary can be read in G. K. Chesterton’s novel The Ball and the Cross.

Seeking satisfaction and revenge was the cause for the War between the Kauravas and the Pandavas. The big battle shall start tomorrow, but the warrior Arjuna has doubts over the killing. This is when Krishna takes him aside and their talk is recorded as the Bhagavad Gita, the central text of Hindu theology. This recording is also available in German.

Buddhism is the other important Eastern religion, and it goes back to the prince Gautama Buddha, who left his palace to seek enlightenment. Read the famous Siddhartha by Hermann Hesse to delve deeper into the life of Buddha.

The prophet Mohammed is considered the founder of Islam, as its most sacred text has been written down by him. Since then, The Meaning of the Glorious Koran has been sought for by countless people. This specific translation is by Mohammed M. Pickthall.

Mary Antin’s family left their Jewish traditions behind in Russia, when they emigrated to America. Read Mary’s touching accout of their new life in The Promised Land where they hoped to find peace and acceptance.

The ancestors of Charles Alexander Eastman, also known as Ohiyesa, emigrated also to North America, albeit thousands of years ago. Read The Soul of the Indian for an in depth view of their unique religion.

Let’s get back to where we started: Christmas. If baking cookies, wrapping presents and other holiday activities contribute to a heightened feeling of stress rather than spirituality, take a break with the first volume of our Hymn Collection.

Happy holidays to people of all faiths!

The Cathay poems, written by Ezra Pound, or rather, tranlated from the Japanese and Chinese, contain Exile’s Letter by the Chinese poet Li Po. Enjoy also the other poems, most of them with travel as theme.

Another travel narrative are the 25 Letters Written During a Short Residence in Sweden, Norway and Denmark by Mary Wollstonecraft. She went there to restore a failing relationship, and ended up writing her most popular book – composed of her letters and journal entries.

Squire Bramble’s family is travelling through England, and the letters to their friends tell about The Expedition of Humphrey Clinker, the adventures of one of their ostlers. Interesting is that none of the letters in Tobias Smollett’s funniest work is written by Humphrey himself…

On the other extreme are the 320 Letters to His Son on the Art of Becoming a Man of the World and a Gentleman that Philip Stanhope, the 4th Earl of Chesterfield, wrote during his lifetime, an enormous manual on self-improvement.

The improvement of the life of a fatherless child was the main motivation behind the letters – and the money sent – of an American boy to his Deer Godchild in France of World War I. The letters were put together by Marguerite Bernard and Edith Serrell.

Daddy Long Legs is the name a young orphan girl gives to her benefactor who pays her college education to become a writer. In return he expects regular letters to see how much she has learned. Find out if the money was well invested in Jean Webster’s well known novel.

Carl Stanton invested his money in an agency to have romantic letters written to him. After all, he is chained to his bed with bad rheumatism, and his girlfriend is not really into letter writing. In the end, however, he gets more than he paid for in Eleanor Hallowell Abbott’s novel Molly Make Believe.

Another romantic story unfolds in the letters of Pamela to her parents. In this epistolary novel by Samuel Richardson, the long resistance of the teenage housemaid is finally rewarded when her master proposes to her.

Letters of Two Brides, namely Louise de Chaulieur and Renée de Maucombe, describes the lives of two young women, starting from the time when they left the convent where they first met. Honoré de Balzac takes you on a journey spanning 17 years and 56 letters.

You know me, Al, by Ring Lardner tells two years of baseball history in a fictional setting: A typical men’s friendship where Chicago White Sox pitcher Jack Keefe keeps writing letters to his old friend Al at home.

Enjoy – and don’t forget to write!