This is our first mention, as far as I know, in an academic conference. By Gary Cziko of University of Illinois, in an article called:

Exploiting the Internet for Foreign Language Input: Resources, Tools and Techniques for Accessing Text and Audio, presented at an Teaching English conference in Taipei.

His wee text on LibriVox notes:

LibriVox: human recordings of a small number of books

Guess we need to get to work!

To make LibriVox simpler and clearer to navigate, we’ve reorganised and redesigned the front page. With the new big buttons and text, visitors shouldn’t have any trouble figuring out how to listen to a book or how to volunteer to read a chapter or two! News and new releases are easily accessible for those who visit frequently.

The changes, we think, are a remarkable improvement and all the more so for being an ultra-efficient team effort. It took only two days from “let’s redesign” to “ready to launch.” Many thanks to the volunteers who gave their time, talent and assistance: Chris, Kristen, Hugh, Kara, Gord, & Squiddhartha.

Your comments and suggestions for improvement are always welcome.

In the early days of LibriVox, there were lots of mysterious hits from Italy … turns out a few big blogs in Italy had posted about us. There were some comments there saying: too bad there’s no Italian audio on librivox. I wrote (thanks google translator!) inviting them to join us in Italian. We had some back-and-forth, and decided that the best thing was for LibriVox Italia to launch a parallel project.

Well, BooksBlog.it and DownloadBlog.it have launched LibriVox Italia … “Libera i libri con tua voce” let’s hope we can practice our Italian soon.

There’s also a forum, if you speak Italian, and want to pitch in your two cents for the cause.