August 10, 2005

LibriVox (aka Podcast Gutenberg)

Hugh has a new project that I’d like to draw attention to:

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?

LibriVox is an open source audio-literary attempt to harness the power of the many to record and disseminate, in podcast form, books from the public domain. It works like this: a book is chosen, then you, the volunteers, read and record one or more chapters. We liberate the audio files through this weblog/podcast every week (?).

More information here. The first book chosen is Joseph Conrad’s The Secret Agent (a work chosen, no doubt, for its renewed relevance today). Although all the chapters are already claimed, anybody interested in volunteering for other works can do so at the forum. Be sure to read this guide before recording.

I’m signed up to read chapter 4 (even though I was disappointed to learn that it did not include a hot sex scene with Natalie Portman), and I’ll be sure to post a copy here when I’m done.

Update 10/24/05

Librivox has now moved to a new domain. Oh, and I recorded chapter 3 of The Secret Agent instead of chapter 4. Here’s the audio file. You can get the other chapters at LibriVox, of course. And LibriVox’s profile is definitely on the rise after Boing Boing mentioned them.

August 10, 2005 01:25 PM in Culture | Permalink
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Comments

tx hombre. the next project will be open source solo free jazz cross-net collaboration. have not yet listened to your latest but will do so soon!! & check again about natalie? I thought she makes a nude appearance - though maybe not in chap 4?

Posted by hugh at 08/10/05, 01:39 PM (link)

Don’t you get my hopes up! Oh, and I haven’t yet posted my latest free jazz thing yet since I still have to convert it to MP3/Ogg Vorbis. Hopefully this week.

Anyway, I’m looking forward to recording my chapter (though I want to actually read/listen up to it first, so as to not get spoiled). And I definitely need to remember to speak slowly!

Posted by fling93 at 08/10/05, 02:30 PM (link)