LibriVox
Established	August 2005
Location	Worldwide (USA based)
Collection
Size	over 6,244 free audiobooks (31 December 2012)
Access and use
Circulation	90 new audiobooks per month in 2011
Members	World-wide volunteers
Other information
Budget	$5,000 per annum
Director	Directorless - community shared
Staff	3540 contributing volunteers
Website	http://librivox.org

LibriVox (various pronunciations are accurate^[1]) 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.^[2] The LibriVox objective is "to make all books in the public domain available, for free, in audio format on the internet".^[3] Librivox has a sister-site called Legamus^[4] which is European based.

By the end of 2012, LibriVox had a catalogue of over 6,244 unabridged books and shorter works available to download^[5] and produced on average 89 audiobooks per month.^[6] Around ninety percent of the collection is in English, although LibriVox recordings are available in 33 languages altogether.

History [edit]

Hugh McGuire, founder of LibriVox

LibriVox works per month

LibriVox was started in August 2005 by Montreal-based writer Hugh McGuire, who set up a blog, and posed the question.^[7][8]

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.

LibriVox etymology [edit]

LibriVox is an invented word inspired by Latin. The word comes from two Latin words libri which is the nominative plural form of liber (book), and vox (voice). Thus, LibriVox means BookVoice. In an alternative English/Latin combination it means LibraryVoice. A similar word in Latin, liberi is plural and means child, offspring. This has sometimes led people to erroneously believe that the word means Child of the Voice, and free, independent, unrestricted meaning FreeVoice.^[9] Both of these are completely wrong considering that liberi is plural and that vox is nominative and not genitive.

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.^[1]

Organization and funding [edit]

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 forum, 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.^[10] 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.^[3]

In 2012 LibriVox received a grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, helping the community to rebuild its technical infrastructure and improving accessibility of the website.^[11]

Production process [edit]

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 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.

Content [edit]

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".^[12] 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 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 2012, the most downloaded item was a 2007 collaborative recording of The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, downloaded a total of 1,408,000 times.^[13] The most downloaded solo recording was Moby Dick read by Stewart Wills downloaded 955,948 times.^[13]

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.

Examples [edit]

• Novel — Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen
• Non-fiction — Capital, Volume 1 by Karl Marx
• Poetry — The Rime of the Ancient Mariner by Samuel Taylor Coleridge
• Drama — The Importance of Being Earnest by Oscar Wilde
• Logic — Prior Analytics by Aristotle
• Children's literature — Children's short works collection
• Spanish — Don Quijote by Miguel de Cervantes
• French — La femme de trente ans by Honoré de Balzac
• Chinese — Lun Yu (The Analects) by Confucius
• Finnish — Rautatie by Juhani Aho
• German — Der Schimmelreiter by Theodor Storm

Reputation and quality [edit]

	Prologues of Moby Dick Stewart Wills' 2007 reading of Moby Dick is, as of July 2011, the most praised librivox recording of all their 6 years.
Problems listening to this file? See media help.

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".^[14]

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.^[15] 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.^[16][17] While listeners may object to those books with chapters read by multiple readers,^[18] others find this to be a non-issue or even a feature.^[19][20][21]

Other readers are praised by listeners for the quality of their output.^[22]

References [edit]

External links [edit]

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: LibriVox

Wikinews has related news: May 2006 Interview with LibriVox founder Hugh McGuire

Listen to this article (info/dl)

This audio file was created from a revision of the "LibriVox" article dated 2007-07-14, and does not reflect subsequent edits to the article. (Audio help)

More spoken articles

LibriVox site

• LibriVox home page and LibriVox Catalogue of Audio Books

Articles

• 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

• Embed LibriVox Audio in your Site

LibriVox mirrors

• LibriVox at Internet Archive (full mirror with streaming and reviews)
• LibriVox at Apple.com iTunes
• LibriVox at Disc Shelf
• Librivox Audiobooks at YouTube