Having fun in Stockholm, at the Stockholm Challenge.
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Stockholm Challenge
blogdesk: LibriVox & ebay
Our friends at SFF Audio have a nice summary of a discussion that comes up once in a while, ebayers selling LibriVox recordings:
I really like the attitude of the people over on LibriVox.org. In one thread on the LibriVox forums a first time poster makes note that ‘LibriVox titles are being sold on eBay for $’. Like that guy I too was quite shocked and a little dismayed when I found that out. Here’s me thinking:
These audiobooks are available for free and yet some people are actually SELLING them!?!?! How dare they!
But as Puffin1, a long time LibriVoxateer so sensibly points out…
“It’s okay. We [LibriVox] don’t mind. Everything we do is in the public domain. Thanks for your concern. Welcome to LibriVox. Have fun!”
How cool is that?
It really sums up the LibriVox attitude too. Another LibriVoxer, David Barnes (AKA earthcalling), pointed out that… ‘
the seller credits LibriVox … and is providing a service that LibriVox doesn’t provide – namely audiobooks on CD.’
Their whole attitude is positive and relaxed, their idea is “the more recordings are ‘out there’, the better!” As it turns out, it’s actually a very good thing that a lot of the sellers on eBay are selling these audiobooks. eBayers looking for audiobooks can discover LibriVox that way.
LibriVox & the Stockholm Challenge
LibriVox is a finalist in the Stockholm Challenge, an award & conference put on by the City of Stockholm, which:
…features a six category Award for ICT for Development projects. ICT stands for Information and Communication Technologies and the best projects will win the prestigious Stockholm Challenge trophies and receive a 5.000 Euro stipend… An extended program of workshops, conference, study visits and social gatherings will bring together the most inspiring ICT entrepreneurs, researchers and students from all over the world to share experiences and knowledge.
Our friends at Project Gutenberg (maybe you’d like to donate? to them) were kind enough to provide some financial support for travel, so I’ll be attending the event along with LibriVox’s resident philosopher, D.E. Wittkower.
blogdesk: nice comment
Every once in a while someone writes a really nice blog comment about LibriVox. This is one:
In tangential news, we’ve upped production approximately 6000% in the past couple weeks, with a couple neat discoveries.
First of all, http://librivox.org is a free source for public domain recordings of public domain books. Now, I don’t know about y’all, but I likes me some literature, and all the sudden here’s all the Twain, Dickens, Wodehouse, and Thoreau you’ll need to keep you busy for a good while. You got’cher Oscar Wilde, yer Leo Tolstoy, and yer H.G. Wells. Edgar Rice Borroughs brings us the amazing Tarzan books, there’s Dr. Dolittle, Sherlock Holmes, and a hefty lot of Oz books. I’m pretty sure Mr. Armadillo is quite (Plato!) through with hearing me randomly (Tom Swift!) shouting out nice finds throughout the last week or so (Dostoyevsky!).I love to have an audiobook running while I work. It keeps my mind busy and I love to spend an afternoon tuned into a reading while making neat things. Audiobooks are hard to come by, though. They’re pricey to buy, and it’s hard for me to get them back to the library on time. Plus, our little branch has a pretty dismal selection, and the good ones can be hard to get ahold of. Finding LibriVox is like I’ve suddenly fallen into this amazing treasure trove, I can’t even adequately describe how tickled I am over the whole thing.
I’ve already signed up to volunteer a reading, and I’ve got a really neat little collection of very old children’s and young adult literature that will be fun to share, most are about dogs or horses or general adventure-type stuff, pirates and shipwrecks. If you know anyone with a Scottish accent that would be willing to do a reading, I have copies of Bob, Son of Battle and Greyfriars Bobby that I would give a great deal to hear properly read.
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