Friday, June 23, 2006

LibriVox - an audiobook project

acoustical liberation of books in the public domain

LibriVox is a free, open web site (i.e., not a library-subscribed resource) that provides access to audio-books in the public domain. LibriVox relies on vounteers to read and record the books. Their mission is to make all public domain books available in audio format for free on the internet.

Most of the books that the LibriVox volunteers record come from Project Gutenberg. Project Gutenberg itself contains the text of over 18,000 books in the public domain. The Internet Archive and ibiblio.org host LibriVox's audio files.

LibriVox does not limit their coverage to English-language materials. There are over 20 titles already available in other languages, including German, Hebrew, Russian and Old English. In fact, although it is still a work in progress, you can listen to many of Grimm's Fairy Tales in both English and German.

If you would like to read (or in some cases, listen to) news about LibriVox, check out the in-the-press list of stories compiled at the LibriVox site.