While we wait for fling93 to produce chapter 3 of the Secret Agent, I thought it would be worthwhile to record a more detailed background on the project (with “umms” edited out!).

Also, stay tuned for an interview about LibriVox with Paula B of the Writing Show.

And here’s the latest librivox podcast, a non-chapter explanation of the project: librivox-background-aug 19 2005.

Here is a brief intro librivox podcast.

LibriVox is a hope, an experiment, and a question: can the net harness a bunch of volunteers to help bring books in the public domain to life through podcasting? Here’s how it works (for now):

1. A book will be selected by LibriVox from the gutenberg project’s database of public domain books
2. (We hope that) a few volunteers will step up to read and record to mp3 one or more chapters from the chosen book, so that we’ll finish with a complete audio book (or audiobook).
3. If you have your own podcast, you could do a special LibriVox edition of your show, and let me know about it; then I’ll grab the audio and put it up on Ourmedia.org, which stores files on the internet archive
4. If you don’t have a podcast, let me know and we’ll find a way to get the chapters uploaded to the LibriVox Ourmedia.org site
5. Each new chapter will be linked from LibriVox, and podcast through feedburner.
6. Once all chapters from a given book are finished, a new book will be chosen and the process will begin again!

So, practically:

1. if you would like to record and post a chapter or a few of a book, please contact LibriVox at: librivox[at]yahoo[dot]ca
2. if you would like to subscribe to the podcast, please:
   a) goto our feedburner feed
   b) and plug the feed … http://feeds.feedburner.com/Librivox … into your podcast receiver (for instance, ipodder)

Please note that the quality of the recordings will vary. My first recordings are pretty poor. (Not everyone can sound as professional as Jan from UAA Audio Books!) But, inspired by wikipedia, we will encourage disgruntled listeners to make better recordings (of poor quality chapters), and make them available to the project. The first objective will to be to put out some recordings and see where this goes.

For some suggestions and notes on how to make audio recording of books, see here.
For help listening, and an explanation of podcastng, see here (coming soon).

This project is inspired by AKMA’s audio volunteer project to bring Lawrence Lessig’s book, Free Culture, to your ears; and Urban Art Adventures’ Audio Book project. In addition to that, the following inspirations should be noted:

• the podchef (and podcasting in general)
• wikipedia
• rms & the Free Software movement
• gutenberg project
• creative commons
• ourmedia
• internet archive
• the “books on tape” I used to listen to as a kid on long drives with some family friends
• the librarians and public libraries around the world
• and all those crusaders for free and equal access to the cultural and communication foundations of our world, who have worked, and continue to work tirelessly to make possible all the infrastructure that lets this project happen

Comments are welcome below, or at: librivox[at)yahoo[dot]ca

A note about me:
I’m a Montreal-based writer interested in the “free movement” in it’s many guises. More about me can be found at my weblog, dose.