User:Kangaroo692/sandbox/librivox

LibriVox is a world-wide, USA-based, non-profit, volunteer effort to create audio records of the books in the public domain. These books are then provided as audio books to the public for free. It was founded in 2005 by Hugh McGuire as a non-profit with no legal personality. As of December 2014 it had over 8,640 items is its collection. Most releases are in the English language, but may non-English works are also available. There are multiple affiliated projects that are providing additional content. LibriVox is also closely affiliated with Project Gutenberg and the Internet Archive that hosts their offerings. LibriVox recordings are available primarily in MP3 format, although many recordings are also available in other formats.

History
Can the net harness a bunch of volunteers to help bring books in the public domain to life through podcasting?

LibriVox was started in August 2005 by Montreal-based writer Hugh McGuire, who set up a blog, and posed the question. The first recorded book was The Secret Agent by Joseph Conrad.

LibriVox is an online digital library of free public domain audiobooks, read by volunteers. The LibriVox objective is "to make all books in the public domain available, for free, in audio format on the internet".

The main features of the way LibriVox works have changed little since its inception, although the technology that supports it has been improved by the efforts of those of its volunteers with web-development skills.

LibriVox etymology
LibriVox is an invented word inspired by Latin words liber (book) in its genitive form libri and vox (voice), giving the meaning BookVoice (or voice of the book). The word was also coined because of other connotations (although not based on proper grammar) as liber also means child and free, independent, unrestricted. As the LibriVox forum says it: "We like to think LibriVox might be interpreted as 'child of the voice', and 'free voice'. Finally, the other link we like is 'library' so you could imagine it to mean Library of Voice."

There has been no decision or consensus by LibriVox founders or the community of volunteers for a single pronunciation of LibriVox. It is accepted that any audible pronunciation is accurate.

Organization and funding
LibriVox volunteers are organized along the lines of their three core processes, individual contributors who read and record the text,s and submit audio files, individual contributors who "Proof Listen" the recordings, and an admin team who coordinates and manages all aspects of the organization.

LibriVox is not incorporated and exists legally as a DBA, address and bank account. (we need to find out this info I believe) It has no annual nor fixed budget. It relies on fundraising for operations and enhancements. In early 2010, LibriVox ran a fundraising drive to raise $20,000 to cover hosting costs for the website of about $5,000/year, and improve front- and backend usability.[8] In 2012, LibriVox applied for, and received, a grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, helping the community to rebuild its technical infrastructure and improving accessibility of the website.[9] In July 2013, LibriVox started another fundraiser hoping to raise $50,000 to cover technical infrastructure additions, ongoing system administration and development costs.[10] How did this work out?

Production process
Experienced volunteers can choose to start new projects to read themselves, allow other volunteers to join them, or record as a dramatic reading or a play. Volunteers and listeners who do not want to coordinate a project themselves can suggest the work.

Finished audiobooks are available from the LibriVox website, and MP3 and Ogg Vorbis files are hosted separately by the Internet Archive. Recordings are also available through other means, such as iTunes, and, being free of copyright, they are frequently distributed independently of LibriVox on the Internet and otherwise.

Recordings are usually created with Audacity, a free open-source digital audio editor, but are occasionally recorded with other software such as Adobe Audition and GarageBand.

Popularity
LibriVox has garnered significant interest, in particular from those interested in the promotion of volunteer-led content and alternative approaches to copyright ownership on the Internet.

It has received support from the Internet Archive and Project Gutenberg. Mike Linksvayer, Vice-President of Creative Commons, has described it as "perhaps the most interesting collaborative culture project this side of Wikipedia".

The project has also been featured in press around the world, and has been recommended by the BBC's Click, MSNBC's The Today Show, Wired, the US PC Magazine and the UK Metro and Sunday Times newspapers.

Scope of collection
LibriVox only records material that is in the Public Domain in the United States, and all LibriVox books are released with a Public Domain dedication. The stated goal of the project is: "...to make all public domain books available, for free, in audio format on the Internet". Because of copyright restrictions, LibriVox produces recordings of only a limited number of contemporary books. These have included, for example, the 9/11 Commission Report.

Offerings
The LibriVox catalogue is varied. It contains much popular classic fiction, but also includes less predictable texts, such as Immanuel Kant's Critique of Pure Reason and a recording of the first 500 digits of pi. The collection also features poetry, plays, religious texts (for example, English versions of the Koran and books from various translations of the Bible) and non-fiction of various kinds. In January 2009, the catalogue contained approximately 55 percent fiction and drama, 25 percent non-fiction and 20 percent poetry (calculated by numbers of recordings). By the end of 2014, the most downloaded item was a 2007 collaborative recording of The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, downloaded a total of 2,437,586 times. The most downloaded solo recording was Pride and Prejudice read by Karen Savage downloaded 1,862,675.

As of April 2015, Internet Archive offered 8,645. LibriVox audiobooks in dozens of topics ranging alphabetically from Action to World War I While there are offerings in 35 languages, the primary language is English. LibriVox also offers Artwork for CD Covers. LibriVox recordings were available in 31 genres, as well as 117 sub-genres. '''Reference help would be greatly appreciated. '''LibriVox also offered recordings in 35 languages.

Side-projects
LibriVox's main goal is to produce public domain recordings. However, LibriVox does have lesser priority side-projects to help achieve it's goal and to give convenience to listeners.

Maybe a bit more information here?

CD covers
Still to be added. :)

M4B production
Still to be added. :)

Links to Wikipedia
Still to be added. :)

Community podcast
Stilll to be added. :]

Criticism
A frequent concern of listeners is the site's policy of allowing any recording to be published as long as it is basically understandable and faithful to the source text. This means that some recordings are of less-than-optimum audio fidelity, and some feature background noises, non-native accents or other perceived imperfections in comparison to professionally recorded audiobooks. While listeners may object to those books with chapters read by multiple readers, others find this to be a non-issue or even a feature.

Other readers are praised by listeners for the quality of their output.