LibriVox.org: The Up and Coming Site for Audio Book Knuckleheads (like Me)

Have you ever fantasized about being a narrator on an audio book?  I know, I know, get a life, right?  But if you’re a fan, there are those times when the narrator of the book you’ve carefully picked out is kind of missing something - or is just not hitting it right. Your dream can come true if you volunteer with LibriVox.org, the year-old collective project aimed at getting ALL of the books in the Public Domain recorded and uploaded for free accessibility.  

The concept is brilliant:  record the entire library of Public Domain literature using volunteers and make it available for free to anyone who wishes to download the material.  It’s like a library of the classics, some more obscure than others, where you never have to worry about late fees.  You can keep them and share them, you are free to use them as you like.  You can get to those classics you been “meaning to read” for decades, painlessly.  It’s a boon to the blind as well as to those with long commutes. In fact, In Touch, BBC 4's radio show for the visually impaired, aired a segment on the project.

The website’s goal statement reads: “LibriVox is a strictly volunteer, open source, free content, public domain project.”  I counted 270 entries, of which, many are short works including poetry such as Clemet C. Moore‘s “Twas the Night Before Christmas” and Whitman’s, “O Captain!  My Captain!” 

In the United States, Public Domain generally means anything published or registered for copyright before 1923; the website does publish a warning that you should verify that these works are in the Public Domain for the country in which you are downloading.  LibriVox’s founder is Hugh McGuire, 32, a software developer and writer in Montreal.  He describes the LibriVox editorial process in this way: