News

Funding Goal Achieved: Thank You!

Posted on March 9, 2010 by | Posted in about LibriVox, For Volunteers, News | Comments: 11 Comments on Funding Goal Achieved: Thank You!

Dear LibriVox supporters, friends, volunteers:

Two weeks ago we sent out a request for donations towards a $20,000 fundraising campaign. We outlined why on this post (with a number of questions answered in the comments thread). You responded with generosity, and we can now close down our campaign.

So:

Thank you!

We got to our target so quickly it warms our hearts. Not only did people donate, but this campaign also allowed many many people to express their appreciation for all the hard and wonderful work done by LibriVox volunteers.

We won’t have to talk about money again for a few years. Instead, we’ll get back to working hard to fulfill our mission, which is:

To make all books in the public domain available, for free, in audio format on the internet.

So: Thank you again.

For those curious:

Campaign Details:

We raised $23,000 from 433 donors, in 13 days, averaging $1,769 in donations from 33 people every day. We had a couple of big donors, who gave a few thousand dollars each, and many more smaller donations which all add up to: everything we asked for. Thank you again.

LibriVox Details:

This money will help support our efforts, which so far have resulted in the following:
* 3773: Total number of projects
* 3227: Number of completed projects
* 470: Number of completed non-English projects
* 31: Total number of languages
* 28: Number of languages with a completed work
* 1498: Number of completed solo projects
* 3549: Number of readers
* 3347: …who have completed something

Total recorded time: 66472509 seconds, or 2 years, 38 days, 20 hours, 57 minutes, and 37 seconds. Total of 66978 sections.

Have I said thank you? Well: thank you again! Oh, and a very special thank-you to our friends and supporters at the Internet Archive, especially Jacques and Brewster, who managed the donations for us so that we didn’t have to worry about setting up paypal accounts and all the rest.

And now, back to making free, public domain audiobooks.

All the best,

Hugh McGuire.

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Levée de fonds à la bibliothèque audio Librivox

Posted on March 6, 2010 by | Posted in about LibriVox, News | Comments: 1 Comment on Levée de fonds à la bibliothèque audio Librivox

UPDATE: Merci, nous avons reussit nos objectifs, alors, on n’a plus besoin d’argent pour l’instant! Mercia à tous.

Votre don soutiendra le travail de nos bénévoles

Le but de notre campagne de levée de fonds est 20 000$. Une fois l’objectif atteint, nous cesserons la campagne. Nous espérons pouvoir continuer notre travail pour environ 4,5 années sans devoir vous en parler de nouveau!

Comment faire un don:

  1. Visitez la page de don “Internet Archive” (Internet Archive est l’organisme de charité reconnu au USA qui gère notre campagne de levée de fonds)
  2. Sélectionnez une méthode pour faire votre don**(Justgive.org, Paypal, ou chèque)
  3. Assurez-vous de bien mentionner “Donation for LibriVox” avec votre paiement (sinon nous ne recevrons pas votre don!)
  4. N’oubliez pas d’écrire “Donation for LibriVox” avec votre paiement!

Note de Internet Archive: Veuillez rassurer vos donateurs que nous ne vendons pas notre liste d’envoi ni n’envoyons de courriels non-sollicités.

[Merci à Maf pour la traduction!]

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LibriVox Community Podcast #111

Posted on March 4, 2010 by | Posted in about LibriVox, Librivox Community Podcast, News | Comments: 4 Comments on LibriVox Community Podcast #111

Listen to LibriVox Community Podcast #111 with Cori, Ruth and Lucy.

[audio:http://www.archive.org/download/librivox_community_2010/librivox_community_podcast_111.mp3]

Duration: 10:00

Oh my goodness! LibriVox needs money?!

In this podcast, Ruth reads Hugh’s blog post announcing our fundraising drive, Lucy says why she thinks this crazy audio project is worth donating to, and a cast of 17 LibriVoxateers sing to charm a dollar or two from your wallet/purse (song orchestrated and edited together by Ruth.)

Also included: snippets of a number of LibriVox recordings. Though I forgot War and Peace, can you believe it!

Music by Bach and Miguez. In the public domain via. musopen.com and performed by Felipe Sarro.

And, yes we need money, but only $20,000, to last us some years into the future. Once we meet this target, we’ll stop accepting donations … as of this Monday, we’d raised $12,000. Not so far to go, now. See this post for more information and how to donate!



To Subscribe to the Librivox Community Podcast, go to:
http://feeds.feedburner.com/LibrivoxCommunityPodcast

Or hit this itunes link to get you to the subscribe page:
http://phobos.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewPodcast?id=203970211

Recent past and present LibriVox Community Podcast files can be found at our spot on:
Archive.org

Archived shows for previous years can be found at:
2006, 2007, 2008 and 2009.

Archived shownotes for the Community Podcast can be found at:
http://librivox.org/category/librivox-community-podcast/

And the rss feed for those shownotes is:
http://librivox.org/category/librivox-community-podcast/feed

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LibriVox Needs Your Help

Posted on February 24, 2010 by | Posted in about LibriVox, News, Uncategorized | Comments: 144 Comments on LibriVox Needs Your Help

UPDATE: We’ve reached our objective. Thank you everybody! More info here.

Dearest LibriVox listeners, volunteers, & supporters:

For four-and-a-half years, LibriVox volunteers have been making audiobooks for the world to enjoy, and giving them away for free. We’ve made thousands of free audiobooks that have been downloaded by millions of people; our site gets 400,000 visitors every month. To date, all our costs have been borne by a few individuals, with some generous donations from partners. However, these costs have become too big.

See below to FIND OUT HOW TO DONATE (Or, keep reading!).

LibriVox needs your help.

We’re asking for donations for the following:

  • to cover hosting costs for our website (about $5,000/year)*, which includes:
    • the site you are reading now;
    • the forum;
    • the wiki;
    • the catalog;
    • a whole lot of back-end software to host and process audio before it goes to the Internet Archive
    • but does NOT include hosting audio files which is done by Archive.org
  • to redesign the site and improve its accessibility
  • to make the LibriVox catalog easier for listeners to use
  • to make the management software easier for admins to use

We expect this fund-raising drive to sustain us for three years at least.

Your donation will support the work of our volunteers.

Our fundraising goal is $20,000. After we reach it, we’ll shut down our fundraising campaign. And we hope we can make it another 4.5 years without having to bother you again!

HOW TO DONATE:

  1. Visit the Internet Archive donation page (the Internet Archive, a registered US charity and friend of LibriVox, is managing our fundraising campaign)
  2. Select a donation method** (Justgive.org, Paypal, or Check)
  3. Be sure to write: “Donation for LibriVox” along with your donation (otherwise we won’t get the donation!)
  4. Don’t forget to write: “Donation for LibriVox” along with your donation!

*NOTE: From our great sysadmin Dan, regarding server costs:
For a variety of reasons, we require a full dedicated server, or at least a very high-end VM with several hundred GB of storage. Though we don’t host the files for end-user download, we do provide an uploading service which book contributors use to share individual chapters and other similar things.

Combine that with lots of wordpress/phpBB modifications, and pretty high wordpress/phpBB traffic, and we fill up a server pretty fast.

In short: Hundreds of GB storage + ~1800 gigabytes Internet transfer per month + heavy MySQL usage adds up to a pretty expensive server or high-end VM. Note that none of this includes projected growth, we will need more resources soon, and that’s also a factor in the dollar amount Hugh mentioned.

I’d also like to point out that the figure does not cover sysadmin support. I work for free. And my job is a lot harder when I have to deal with an intermediary sysadmin, which some hosting companies force upon you. Where we are right now, I myself am root.

**NOTE: From the Internet Archive (who is kindly administering this campaign for us): Please reassure your donors that we do not sell our mailing list nor send unsolicited mail out.

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