LibriVox is a group of worldwide volunteers who read and record

public domain The public domain (PD) consists of all the creative work to which no exclusive intellectual property rights apply. Those rights may have expired, been forfeited, expressly waived, or may be inapplicable. Because those rights have expired ...

texts, creating free public domain

audiobook An audiobook (or a talking book) is a recording of a book or other work being read out loud. A reading of the complete text is described as "unabridged", while readings of shorter versions are abridgements. Spoken audio has been available in sc ...

s for download from their website and other

digital library A digital library, also called an online library, an internet library, a digital repository, or a digital collection is an online database of digital objects that can include text, still images, audio, video, digital documents, or other digital ...

hosting sites on the internet. It was founded in 2005 by Hugh McGuire to provide "Acoustical liberation of books in the public domain"LibriVox Author
, LibriVox website. Retrieved 16 April 2015. and the LibriVox objective is "To make all books in the public domain available, for free, in audio format on the internet".Objective LibriVox
, LibriVox website. Retrieved 24 August 2011. On 6 August 2016, the completed projects numbered 10,000, and on 14 February 2021 there were 15,000 completed projects. Most releases are in the English language, but many non-English works are also available. There are multiple affiliated projects that are providing additional content. LibriVox is closely affiliated with

Project Gutenberg Project Gutenberg (PG) is a volunteer effort to digitize and archive cultural works, as well as to "encourage the creation and distribution of eBooks." It was founded in 1971 by American writer Michael S. Hart and is the oldest digital libr ...

from where the project gets some of its texts, and the

Internet Archive The Internet Archive is an American digital library with the stated mission of "universal access to all knowledge". It provides free public access to collections of digitized materials, including websites, software applications/games, music, ...

that hosts their offerings.

History

LibriVox was started in August 2005 by

Montreal Montreal ( ; officially Montréal, ) is the second-most populous city in Canada and most populous city in the Canadian province of Quebec. Founded in 1642 as '' Ville-Marie'', or "City of Mary", it is named after Mount Royal, the triple- ...

-based writer Hugh McGuire, who set up a

blog A blog (a Clipping (morphology), truncation of "weblog") is a discussion or informational website published on the World Wide Web consisting of discrete, often informal diary-style text entries (posts). Posts are typically displayed in Reverse ...

, and posed the question. The first recorded book was ''

The Secret Agent ''The Secret Agent: A Simple Tale'' is a novel by Joseph Conrad, first published in 1907.. The story is set in London in 1886 and deals with Mr. Adolf Verloc and his work as a spy for an unnamed country (presumably Russia). ''The Secret Agent ...

'' by

Joseph Conrad Joseph Conrad (born Józef Teodor Konrad Korzeniowski, ; 3 December 1857 – 3 August 1924) was a Polish-British novelist and short story writer. He is regarded as one of the greatest writers in the English language; though he did not spe ...

. 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 its volunteers with web-development skills.

Etymology of LibriVox

''LibriVox'' is an invented word inspired by

Latin Latin (, or , ) is a classical language belonging to the Italic languages, Italic branch of the Indo-European languages. Latin was originally a dialect spoken in the lower Tiber area (then known as Latium) around present-day Rome, but through ...

words (book) in its

genitive In grammar, the genitive case ( abbreviated ) is the grammatical case that marks a word, usually a noun, as modifying another word, also usually a noun—thus indicating an attributive relationship of one noun to the other noun. A genitive can a ...

form and (voice), giving the meaning ''BookVoice'' (or ''voice of the book''). The word was also coined because of other connotations: also means ''child'' and ''free, independent, unrestricted''. As the LibriVox forum says: "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 pronunciation is accurate.Pronunciation of "LibriVox"
, LibriVox wiki. Retrieved 21 November 2011.

Organization and funding

LibriVox is a volunteer-run, free content, public domain project. It has no budget or

legal person In law, a legal person is any person or 'thing' (less ambiguously, any legal entity) that can do the things a human person is usually able to do in law – such as enter into contracts, sue and be sued, own property, and so on. The reason f ...

ality. The development of projects is managed through an

Internet 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 often longer than one line of text, and are at least tempora ...

, 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, and so the fundraising ended and LibriVox suggested that supporters consider making donations to its affiliates and partners,

and the

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 files are hosted separately by the

. Recordings are also available through other means, such as

YouTube YouTube is a global online video sharing and social media platform headquartered in San Bruno, California. It was launched on February 14, 2005, by Steve Chen, Chad Hurley, and Jawed Karim. It is owned by Google, and is the second mo ...

and

iTunes iTunes () is a software program that acts as a media player, media library, mobile device management utility, and the client app for the iTunes Store. Developed by Apple Inc., it is used to purchase, play, download, and organize digital mu ...

, and, being free of copyright, they are frequently distributed independently of LibriVox on the Internet and otherwise.

Content

LibriVox recorded hours by year 2006–2021

LibriVox only records material that is in the

in the United States, and all LibriVox books are released with a public domain dedication. 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 9/11 Commission Report'' (officially the ''Final Report of the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States)'' is the official report into the events leading up to the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks. It was prepa ...

which is a work of the US Federal Government therefore in the Public Domain. The LibriVox catalogue is varied. It contains much popular classic fiction, but also includes less predictable texts, such as

Immanuel Kant Immanuel Kant (, , ; 22 April 1724 – 12 February 1804) was a German philosopher and one of the central Enlightenment thinkers. Born in Königsberg, Kant's comprehensive and systematic works in epistemology, metaphysics, ethics, and ...

'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 The Quran (, ; Standard Arabic: , Quranic Arabic: , , 'the recitation'), also romanized Qur'an or Koran, is the central religious text of Islam, believed by Muslims to be a revelation from God. It is organized in 114 chapters (pl.: , si ...

and books from various translations of the

Bible The Bible (from Koine Greek , , 'the books') is a collection of religious texts or scriptures that are held to be sacred in Christianity Christianity is an Abrahamic monotheistic religion based on the life and teachings of Jesus ...

) 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 2021, the most viewed item (16.40M) was a reading of ''

The Art of War ''The Art of War'' () is an ancient Chinese military treatise dating from the Late Spring and Autumn Period (roughly 5th century BC). The work, which is attributed to the ancient Chinese military strategist Sun Tzu ("Master Sun"), is com ...

'' attributed to Sun Tzu and read in 2006 by Moira Fogarty. Around 90 percent of the catalogue is recorded in English, but recordings exist in 31 languages altogether (). 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"
'' Tagalog Tagalog may refer to: Language * Tagalog language, a language spoken in the Philippines ** Old Tagalog, an archaic form of the language ** Batangas Tagalog, a dialect of the language * Tagalog script, the writing system historically used for Taga ...

Reputation

LibriVox has garnered significant interest, in particular from those interested in the promotion of volunteer-led content and alternative approaches to

copyright A copyright is a type of intellectual property that gives its owner the exclusive right to copy, distribute, adapt, display, and perform a creative work, usually for a limited time. The creative work may be in a literary, artistic, educatio ...

ownership on the Internet. It has received support from the

and

. Intellectual freedom and commons proponent

Mike Linksvayer Mike Linksvayer is an intellectual freedom and commons proponent, known as a technology entrepreneur, developer and activist from co-founding Bitzi and leadership of Creative Commons. He is GitHub's Policy Director. Biography Linksvayer holds a ...

described it in 2008 as "perhaps the most interesting collaborative culture project this side of

Wikipedia Wikipedia is a multilingual free online encyclopedia written and maintained by a community of volunteers, known as Wikipedians, through open collaboration and using a wiki-based editing system. Wikipedia is the largest and most-read refer ...

". 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'', ''Reason'',The Wealth of LibriVox
, Reason.com, Retrieved 19 April 2015. ''Wired'',The Web Will Read You a Story
, archive.org, Retrieved 19 April 2015. the US ''

PC Magazine ''PC Magazine'' (shortened as ''PCMag'') is an American computer magazine published by Ziff Davis. A print edition was published from 1982 to January 2009. Publication of online editions started in late 1994 and have continued to the presen ...

'' and the UK ''Metro'' and ''Sunday Times''Public Domain Books, Ready for Your iPod
, nytimes.com, Retrieved 19 April 2015. newspapers.

Quality

A frequent concern of listeners is the site's policy of allowing any recording to be published as long as it is understandable and faithful to the source text. This means that some recordings are of lower audio fidelity; some feature background noises, non-native accents or other perceived imperfections in comparison to professionally recorded audiobooks. While some listeners may object to those books with chapters read by multiple readers, others find this to be a non-issue or even a feature,
, Review 12 March 2010. Retrieved 22 November 2011. though many books are narrated by a single reader.

References

External links

* {{Authority control Accessible information Audiobook companies and organizations American book websites Collaborative projects Open content projects Public domain books