LibriVox
Encyclopedia
LibriVox is an online digital library
of free public domain
audiobooks, read by volunteers and is probably, since 2007, the world's most prolific audiobook publisher. The LibriVox objective is "to make all books in the public domain available, for free, in audio format on the internet".
In December 2011, it had a catalogue of over 5000 unabridged books and shorter works available to download and produced on average 90 audiobooks per month. Around ninety percent of the collection is in English
, although LibriVox recordings are available in 33 languages altogether.
-based writer Hugh McGuire, who set up a blog
, and posed the question.
The initial response to this question was positive enough that the first LibriVox recording was made available in MP3 format within a month of the blog going live. It was a recording of Joseph Conrad
's The Secret Agent
, with chapters recorded by McGuire and eleven volunteers who had been attracted by the blog.
In October 2005, LibriVox acquired its own URL (librivox.org), on which McGuire set up a web forum, and the number of volunteers and works made available began steadily to grow. A total of 30 books were recorded and released through the website by the end of the year.
By late 2006, the site was releasing around 30 books per month, and coverage of the project on the Internet and in the traditional press saw the number of volunteers recording for the site move into the hundreds.
By January 2009, over 2,000 Librivox books and short works had been published, using the voices of 2,400 volunteers. By December 2010, the total was 4,000, using the voices of nearly 4,000 volunteers from around the world.
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.
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.
, supported by an admin team, who also maintain a searchable catalogue database of completed works.
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. The target was reached in 13 days, so the fundraising ended and LibriVox suggested that supporters consider making donations to its partners Project Gutenberg
and the Internet Archive
.
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.
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
.
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 versions 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). In December 2011, the most downloaded item was a 2007 collaborative recording of The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes
, downloaded a total of 770,848 times.
Around 90 percent of the catalogue is recorded in English, but recordings exist in 31 languages altogether (as of February 2010). Chinese, French and German are the most popular languages other than English amongst volunteers, but recordings have also been made in languages including Urdu
and Tagalog
.
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.
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 either a non-issue or a potentially entertaining feature.
Other readers are praised by listeners for the quality of their output.
Articles
LibriVox tools
LibriVox mirrors
Digital library
A digital library is a library in which collections are stored in digital formats and accessible by computers. The digital content may be stored locally, or accessed remotely via computer networks...
of free public domain
Public domain
Works are in the public domain if the intellectual property rights have expired, if the intellectual property rights are forfeited, or if they are not covered by intellectual property rights at all...
audiobooks, read by volunteers and is probably, since 2007, the world's most prolific audiobook publisher. The LibriVox objective is "to make all books in the public domain available, for free, in audio format on the internet".
In December 2011, it had a catalogue of over 5000 unabridged books and shorter works available to download and produced on average 90 audiobooks per month. Around ninety percent of the collection is in English
English language
English is a West Germanic language that arose in the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of England and spread into what was to become south-east Scotland under the influence of the Anglian medieval kingdom of Northumbria...
, although LibriVox recordings are available in 33 languages altogether.
History
LibriVox was started in August 2005 by MontrealMontreal
Montreal is a city in Canada. It is the largest city in the province of Quebec, the second-largest city in Canada and the seventh largest in North America...
-based writer Hugh McGuire, who set up a blog
Blog
A blog is a type of website or part of a website supposed to be updated with new content from time to time. Blogs are usually maintained by an individual with regular entries of commentary, descriptions of events, or other material such as graphics or video. Entries are commonly displayed in...
, and posed the question.
The initial response to this question was positive enough that the first LibriVox recording was made available in MP3 format within a month of the blog going live. It was a recording of Joseph Conrad
Joseph Conrad
Joseph Conrad was a Polish-born English novelist.Conrad is regarded as one of the great novelists in English, although he did not speak the language fluently until he was in his twenties...
's The Secret Agent
The Secret Agent
The Secret Agent: A Simple Tale is a novel by Joseph Conrad published in 1907. The story is set in London in 1886 and deals largely with the life of Mr. Verloc and his job as a spy. The Secret Agent is also notable as it is one of Conrad's later political novels, which move away from his typical...
, with chapters recorded by McGuire and eleven volunteers who had been attracted by the blog.
In October 2005, LibriVox acquired its own URL (librivox.org), on which McGuire set up a web forum, and the number of volunteers and works made available began steadily to grow. A total of 30 books were recorded and released through the website by the end of the year.
By late 2006, the site was releasing around 30 books per month, and coverage of the project on the Internet and in the traditional press saw the number of volunteers recording for the site move into the hundreds.
By January 2009, over 2,000 Librivox books and short works had been published, using the voices of 2,400 volunteers. By December 2010, the total was 4,000, using the voices of nearly 4,000 volunteers from around the world.
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. The words considered include libri and liber (book), and vox (voice) meaning BookVoice. In an alternative English/Latin combination it means LibraryVoice. Where liber means book in Latin the word also means child, offspring resulting in Child of the Voice, and free, independent, unrestricted meaning FreeVoice.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 is a volunteer-run, free content, Public Domain project. It has no budget or legal personality. The development of projects is managed through an Internet forumInternet forum
An Internet forum, or message board, is an online discussion site where people can hold conversations in the form of posted messages. They differ from chat rooms in that messages are at least temporarily archived...
, supported by an admin team, who also maintain a searchable catalogue database of completed works.
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. The target was reached in 13 days, so the fundraising ended and LibriVox suggested that supporters consider making donations to its partners Project Gutenberg
Project Gutenberg
Project Gutenberg is a volunteer effort to digitize and archive cultural works, to "encourage the creation and distribution of eBooks". Founded in 1971 by Michael S. Hart, it is the oldest digital library. Most of the items in its collection are the full texts of public domain books...
and the Internet Archive
Internet Archive
The Internet Archive is a non-profit digital library with the stated mission of "universal access to all knowledge". It offers permanent storage and access to collections of digitized materials, including websites, music, moving images, and nearly 3 million public domain books. The Internet Archive...
.
Production process
Volunteers can choose new projects to start, either recording on their own or inviting others to join them, or they can contribute to projects that have been started by others. Once a volunteer has recorded his or her contribution, it is uploaded to the site, and proof-listened by members of the LibriVox community.Finished audiobooks are available from the LibriVox website, and MP3
MP3
MPEG-1 or MPEG-2 Audio Layer III, more commonly referred to as MP3, is a patented digital audio encoding format using a form of lossy data compression...
and Ogg Vorbis
Vorbis
Vorbis is a free software / open source project headed by the Xiph.Org Foundation . The project produces an audio format specification and software implementation for lossy audio compression...
files are hosted separately by the Internet Archive
Internet Archive
The Internet Archive is a non-profit digital library with the stated mission of "universal access to all knowledge". It offers permanent storage and access to collections of digitized materials, including websites, music, moving images, and nearly 3 million public domain books. The Internet Archive...
. Recordings are also available through other means, such as iTunes
ITunes Store
The iTunes Store is a software-based online digital media store operated by Apple. Opening as the iTunes Music Store on April 28, 2003, with over 200,000 items to purchase, it is, as of April 2008, the number-one music vendor in the United States...
, and, being free of copyright, they are frequently distributed independently of LibriVox on the Internet and otherwise.
Content
LibriVox only records material that is in the Public DomainPublic domain
Works are in the public domain if the intellectual property rights have expired, if the intellectual property rights are forfeited, or if they are not covered by intellectual property rights at all...
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
9/11 Commission Report
The 9/11 Commission Report, formally named Final Report of the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States, is the official report of the events leading up to the September 11, 2001 attacks...
.
The LibriVox catalogue is varied. It contains much popular classic fiction, but also includes less predictable texts, such as Immanuel Kant
Immanuel Kant
Immanuel Kant was a German philosopher from Königsberg , researching, lecturing and writing on philosophy and anthropology at the end of the 18th Century Enlightenment....
's Critique of Pure Reason
Critique of Pure Reason
The Critique of Pure Reason by Immanuel Kant, first published in 1781, second edition 1787, is considered one of the most influential works in the history of philosophy. Also referred to as Kant's "first critique," it was followed by the Critique of Practical Reason and the Critique of Judgement...
and a recording of the first 500 digits of pi
Pi
' is a mathematical constant that is the ratio of any circle's circumference to its diameter. is approximately equal to 3.14. Many formulae in mathematics, science, and engineering involve , which makes it one of the most important mathematical constants...
. The collection also features poetry, plays, religious texts (for example, English versions of the Koran and books from various versions of the Bible
Bible
The Bible refers to any one of the collections of the primary religious texts of Judaism and Christianity. There is no common version of the Bible, as the individual books , their contents and their order vary among denominations...
) 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). In December 2011, the most downloaded item was a 2007 collaborative recording of The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes
The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes
The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes is a collection of twelve stories by Arthur Conan Doyle, featuring his famous detective and illustrated by Sidney Paget....
, downloaded a total of 770,848 times.
Around 90 percent of the catalogue is recorded in English, but recordings exist in 31 languages altogether (as of February 2010). Chinese, French and German are the most popular languages other than English amongst volunteers, but recordings have also been made in languages including Urdu
Urdu
Urdu is a register of the Hindustani language that is identified with Muslims in South Asia. It belongs to the Indo-European family. Urdu is the national language and lingua franca of Pakistan. It is also widely spoken in some regions of India, where it is one of the 22 scheduled languages and an...
and Tagalog
Tagalog language
Tagalog is an Austronesian language spoken as a first language by a third of the population of the Philippines and as a second language by most of the rest. It is the first language of the Philippine region IV and of Metro Manila...
.
Examples
- Novel — Pride and Prejudice by Jane AustenJane AustenJane Austen was an English novelist whose works of romantic fiction, set among the landed gentry, earned her a place as one of the most widely read writers in English literature, her realism and biting social commentary cementing her historical importance among scholars and critics.Austen lived...
- Non-fiction — Capital, Volume 1 by Karl MarxKarl MarxKarl Heinrich Marx was a German philosopher, economist, sociologist, historian, journalist, and revolutionary socialist. His ideas played a significant role in the development of social science and the socialist political movement...
- Poetry — The Rime of the Ancient Mariner by Samuel Taylor ColeridgeSamuel Taylor ColeridgeSamuel Taylor Coleridge was an English poet, Romantic, literary critic and philosopher who, with his friend William Wordsworth, was a founder of the Romantic Movement in England and a member of the Lake Poets. He is probably best known for his poems The Rime of the Ancient Mariner and Kubla...
- Drama — The Importance of Being Earnest by Oscar WildeOscar WildeOscar Fingal O'Flahertie Wills Wilde was an Irish writer and poet. After writing in different forms throughout the 1880s, he became one of London's most popular playwrights in the early 1890s...
- Logic — Prior Analytics by AristotleAristotleAristotle was a Greek philosopher and polymath, a student of Plato and teacher of Alexander the Great. His writings cover many subjects, including physics, metaphysics, poetry, theater, music, logic, rhetoric, linguistics, politics, government, ethics, biology, and zoology...
- Children's literature — Children's short works collection
- Spanish — Don Quijote by Miguel de CervantesMiguel de CervantesMiguel de Cervantes Saavedra was a Spanish novelist, poet, and playwright. His magnum opus, Don Quixote, considered the first modern novel, is a classic of Western literature, and is regarded amongst the best works of fiction ever written...
- French — La femme de trente ans by Honoré de BalzacHonoré de BalzacHonoré de Balzac was a French novelist and playwright. His magnum opus was a sequence of short stories and novels collectively entitled La Comédie humaine, which presents a panorama of French life in the years after the 1815 fall of Napoleon....
- Chinese — Lun Yu (The Analects) by ConfuciusConfuciusConfucius , literally "Master Kong", was a Chinese thinker and social philosopher of the Spring and Autumn Period....
- Finnish — Rautatie by Juhani AhoJuhani AhoJuhani Aho, originally Johannes Brofeldt, was a Finnish author and journalist.Aho's literary output is wide-ranging since he pursued different styles as time passed....
Reputation and quality
LibriVox has garnered significant interest, in particular from those interested in the promotion of volunteer-led content and alternative approaches to copyrightCopyright
Copyright is a legal concept, enacted by most governments, giving the creator of an original work exclusive rights to it, usually for a limited time...
ownership on the Internet.
It has received support from the Internet Archive
Internet Archive
The Internet Archive is a non-profit digital library with the stated mission of "universal access to all knowledge". It offers permanent storage and access to collections of digitized materials, including websites, music, moving images, and nearly 3 million public domain books. The Internet Archive...
and Project Gutenberg
Project Gutenberg
Project Gutenberg is a volunteer effort to digitize and archive cultural works, to "encourage the creation and distribution of eBooks". Founded in 1971 by Michael S. Hart, it is the oldest digital library. Most of the items in its collection are the full texts of public domain books...
. Mike Linksvayer
Mike Linksvayer
Mike Linksvayer is vice president of Creative Commons.Linksvayer holds a B.A. in economics from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and has experience as a software developer and consultant. He joined Creative Commons as Chief technical officer in April 2003, and held that position until...
, Vice-President of Creative Commons
Creative Commons
Creative Commons is a non-profit organization headquartered in Mountain View, California, United States devoted to expanding the range of creative works available for others to build upon legally and to share. The organization has released several copyright-licenses known as Creative Commons...
, has described it as "perhaps the most interesting collaborative culture project this side of Wikipedia
Wikipedia
Wikipedia is a free, web-based, collaborative, multilingual encyclopedia project supported by the non-profit Wikimedia Foundation. Its 20 million articles have been written collaboratively by volunteers around the world. Almost all of its articles can be edited by anyone with access to the site,...
".
The project has also been featured in press around the world, and has been recommended by the BBC's Click
Click (TV series)
Click is a weekly BBC television programme covering news and recent developments in the world of consumer technology, presented by Spencer Kelly....
, MSNBC's The Today Show, Wired
Wired (magazine)
Wired is a full-color monthly American magazine and on-line periodical, published since January 1993, that reports on how new and developing technology affects culture, the economy, and politics...
, the US PC Magazine
PC Magazine
PC Magazine is a computer magazine published by Ziff Davis Publishing Holdings Inc. A print edition was published from 1982 to January 2009...
and the UK Metro
Metro (Associated Metro Limited)
Metro is a free daily newspaper in the United Kingdom published by Associated Newspapers Ltd . It is available from Monday to Friday each week on many public transport services across the United Kingdom.-History:The paper was launched in London in 1999, and can now be found in 14 UK urban centres...
and Sunday Times
The Sunday Times
The Sunday Times is a British Sunday newspaper.The Sunday Times may also refer to:*The Sunday Times *The Sunday Times *The Sunday Times *The Sunday Times...
newspapers.
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 either a non-issue or a potentially entertaining feature.
Other readers are praised by listeners for the quality of their output.
| Reader | Title | Author | First published | LibriVox link | Note(s) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Elizabeth Klett | Jane Eyre Jane Eyre Jane Eyre is a novel by English writer Charlotte Brontë. It was published in London, England, in 1847 by Smith, Elder & Co. with the title Jane Eyre. An Autobiography under the pen name "Currer Bell." The first American edition was released the following year by Harper & Brothers of New York... |
Charlotte Brontë Charlotte Brontë Charlotte Brontë was an English novelist and poet, the eldest of the three Brontë sisters who survived into adulthood, whose novels are English literature standards... |
1847 | link | |
| Ruth Golding | Wuthering Heights Wuthering Heights Wuthering Heights is a novel by Emily Brontë published in 1847. It was her only novel and written between December 1845 and July 1846. It remained unpublished until July 1847 and was not printed until December after the success of her sister Charlotte Brontë's novel Jane Eyre... |
Emily Brontë Emily Brontë Emily Jane Brontë 30 July 1818 – 19 December 1848) was an English novelist and poet, best remembered for her only novel, Wuthering Heights, now considered a classic of English literature. Emily was the third eldest of the four surviving Brontë siblings, between the youngest Anne and her brother... |
1847 | link | |
| Karen Savage | Pride and Prejudice Pride and Prejudice Pride and Prejudice is a novel by Jane Austen, first published in 1813. The story follows the main character Elizabeth Bennet as she deals with issues of manners, upbringing, morality, education and marriage in the society of the landed gentry of early 19th-century England... |
Jane Austen Jane Austen Jane Austen was an English novelist whose works of romantic fiction, set among the landed gentry, earned her a place as one of the most widely read writers in English literature, her realism and biting social commentary cementing her historical importance among scholars and critics.Austen lived... |
1813 | link | |
| Kara Shallenberg | The Secret Garden The Secret Garden The Secret Garden is a novel by Frances Hodgson Burnett. It was initially published in serial format starting in the autumn of 1910, and was first published in its entirety in 1911. It is now one of Burnett's most popular novels, and is considered to be a classic of English children's... |
Frances Hodgson Burnett Frances Hodgson Burnett Frances Eliza Hodgson Burnett was an English playwright and author. She is best known for her children's stories, in particular The Secret Garden , A Little Princess, and Little Lord Fauntleroy.Born Frances Eliza Hodgson, she lived in Cheetham Hill, Manchester... |
1911 | link | |
| Mil Nicholson | Dombey and Son Dombey and Son Dombey and Son is a novel by the Victorian author Charles Dickens. It was first published in monthly parts between October 1846 and April 1848 with the full title Dealings with the Firm of Dombey and Son: Wholesale, Retail and for Exportation... |
Charles Dickens Charles Dickens Charles John Huffam Dickens was an English novelist, generally considered the greatest of the Victorian period. Dickens enjoyed a wider popularity and fame than had any previous author during his lifetime, and he remains popular, having been responsible for some of English literature's most iconic... |
1848 | link | |
| Mark F. Smith | Great Expectations Great Expectations Great Expectations is a novel by Charles Dickens. It was first published in serial form in the publication All the Year Round from 1 December 1860 to August 1861. It has been adapted for stage and screen over 250 times.... |
Charles Dickens Charles Dickens Charles John Huffam Dickens was an English novelist, generally considered the greatest of the Victorian period. Dickens enjoyed a wider popularity and fame than had any previous author during his lifetime, and he remains popular, having been responsible for some of English literature's most iconic... |
1861 | link | |
| John Greenman | Adventures of Huckleberry Finn Adventures of Huckleberry Finn Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is a novel by Mark Twain, first published in England in December 1884 and in the United States in February 1885. Commonly named among the Great American Novels, the work is among the first in major American literature to be written in the vernacular, characterized by... |
Mark Twain Mark Twain Samuel Langhorne Clemens , better known by his pen name Mark Twain, was an American author and humorist... |
1884 | link | |
| Mark Nelson | Right Ho, Jeeves Right Ho, Jeeves Right Ho, Jeeves is a novel by P. G. Wodehouse, the second full-length novel featuring the popular characters Jeeves and Bertie Wooster, after Thank You, Jeeves. It also features a host of other recurring Wodehouse characters, and is mostly set at Brinkley Court, the home of Bertie's Aunt Dahlia... |
P. G. Wodehouse P. G. Wodehouse Sir Pelham Grenville Wodehouse, KBE was an English humorist, whose body of work includes novels, short stories, plays, poems, song lyrics, and numerous pieces of journalism. He enjoyed enormous popular success during a career that lasted more than seventy years and his many writings continue to be... |
1934 | link | |
| Adrian Praetzellis | The Thirty-Nine Steps The Thirty-nine Steps The Thirty-Nine Steps is an adventure novel by the Scottish author John Buchan. It first appeared as a serial in Blackwood's Magazine in August and September 1915 before being published in book form in October that year by William Blackwood and Sons, Edinburgh... |
John Buchan John Buchan, 1st Baron Tweedsmuir John Buchan, 1st Baron Tweedsmuir was a Scottish novelist, historian and Unionist politician who served as Governor General of Canada, the 15th since Canadian Confederation.... |
1915 | link | |
| Stewart Wills | Moby Dick | Herman Melville Herman Melville Herman Melville was an American novelist, short story writer, essayist, and poet. He is best known for his novel Moby-Dick and the posthumous novella Billy Budd.... |
1851 | link | Most praised librivox recording |
External links
LibriVox siteArticles
- Xeni Tech story from NPR's Day to Day, "Amateur Audio Books Catch Fire on the Web"
- Reason Magazine: The Wealth of LibriVox (May 2007)
LibriVox tools
LibriVox mirrors
- LibriVox at Internet ArchiveInternet ArchiveThe Internet Archive is a non-profit digital library with the stated mission of "universal access to all knowledge". It offers permanent storage and access to collections of digitized materials, including websites, music, moving images, and nearly 3 million public domain books. The Internet Archive...
(full mirror with streaming and reviews) - LibriVox at Apple.com iTunesITunesiTunes is a media player computer program, used for playing, downloading, and organizing digital music and video files on desktop computers. It can also manage contents on iPod, iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad....
- LibriVox at Disc Shelf